lee/hpr-knowledge-base
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Initial commit: HPR Knowledge Base MCP Server

Browse Source 
- MCP server with stdio transport for local use
- Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series
- 4,511 episodes with metadata and transcripts
- Data loader with in-memory JSON storage

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Lee Hanken
2025-10-26 10:54:13 +00:00
commit 7c8efd2228
4494 changed files with 1705541 additions and 0 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

405
hpr_transcripts/hpr0001.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,405 @@
Episode: 1
Title: HPR0001: Introduction to HPR
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0001/hpr0001.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 09:58:56
---
next episode!
Hello there, everybody, and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio Episode No. 201, I am
Thank you very, very, very, wait. It's not in my radio. We use it that round, it's 200.
This isn't 201? No, no, no. What are we?
Hacker Public Radio. What is it? What's Hacker Public Radio?
Not sure, remember, you know, you and boom, talking about it way back in the day, and we decided to do this
Hacker Radio thing and combine it and make Hacker Public Radio.
Oh, yes, now I remember. Actually, yes, we are doing episode one of Hacker Public Radio, and the other voice you heard is that of our good friend, Enigma.
Yes, yes, thank you.
And we are going to do Hacker Episode One, and this is going to be an overview of exactly what is Hacker Public Radio joking aside.
This is the debut episode of a new show, and we're going to tell you all about what the show is about, how it came about,
what the future is and the plans we have for the show, and hopefully answer any questions we might have so that we can get a lot of participation
and a lot of great content for what we hope will be a very long running show.
Now...
The community-related show that we also love with the topic is now going to be Hacker Public Radio because I taste my topic name.
Not true. Actually, it goes back a little bit further than that.
The name HPR, or the idea that HPR Hacker Public Radio actually stems back from the old RFA days, Radio Freak America.
When Duel and I, Duel was going to be wrapping up Radio Freak America.
The Revolution Radio was just starting or had just started, and Duel was going to take a little time off.
And hopefully he and I had the idea of coming back with another show called HPR Hacker Public Radio, which was going to be a little bit more of a serious show.
And actually what I had originally envisioned for the show was it was going to be more of a roundtable group discussion show.
And that may actually happen, but we'll come back that later.
What I envisioned for Hacker Public Radio was more of a crossfire style show with one mediator and people from opposing sides
discussing different topics like high-resue, good, or bad.
And we try to get some representatives who supported one view and people who supported a different view and have kind of an actual intelligent conversation and debate about the topic.
We wanted to do something a little bit more serious.
We have a lot of fun on the shows that we've done from Ben Rav to RFA to TWA Tech and all that.
But we wanted to try to get something a little bit more serious and a little bit more mainstream as far as the overall feel of the show.
Now we're still going to have fun, don't get me wrong.
But that's what the original idea was.
And we wanted it to be more community-based and so far as we would have a bunch of different guests on it,
it wasn't always going to be about the host.
If anything, the host was just a mediator and it was always the guests, the community, that were providing the content.
Well, that was the original idea, but it kind of spun a little bit from there when dual-ended radio-freech America.
And we were full into radio, full into binary revolution radio.
It was actually the guys over at Infonomicon Groups, Enigma, who started a show called TWA Tech.
And why don't you talk a little bit about that show?
Because I know Drubes has said that us mentioning HPR on RFA is what kind of motivated him.
And that was his idea for TWA Tech all along.
Was it community-based show?
And the only reason he didn't call it HPR then is because he thought we were going to be coming out with it soon.
So he went with TWA Tech.
Well, originally Goss Man and Drubes started this show called TWA Tech Radio.
And it was a joke of the name. It was based off of TWA Tech.
I forget the acronym.
The acronym is for TWA Tech.
I'll find it while you speak again.
This week in Tech, that's it.
I think it was, yeah, this week in Tech.
So we called it today with a Techie sort of topic for short.
And I wasn't around at this time.
I'm a lecturer.
Another intern, a non-con member, was a admin for that site for about a year.
For he had real rights come up, like I would let's do.
And decided to step back and I took it over.
And it's been a really community-based radio.
We have a ton of different hosts.
It's very in-content.
My clip shows and everyone wants to know why I mix it up with a old, yeah,
I've done video and RFA, I've done, I did it with Jason Scott.
That's how I'm presentation.
So I've done pretty much, did you dam it?
I want to do, I want to get back to the platform.
That's what you did with the telephonic lab lecturer.
I want to do things like that.
I do clip shows.
And I also do, you know, serious content of a lot of the mix that we want for a lot.
Well, and that's actually a good point.
The one of the things that's great about HBR,
and I always enjoyed this listener of Tawtech was the fact that we don't really have set topics
so far as we don't have a limit on no politics, or no this, or no that,
or only talk about hacking, or only emphasize freaking.
We're actually pretty open-minded on these shows,
and we want people to contact us with anything hacking-related.
And what I mean by hacking-related, it's very loosely defined.
There's going to be a lot of episodes about Linux,
because it's very near and dear to the hearts of hackers everywhere.
So there's going to be a lot of shows that are just Linux-centric.
There are going to be a lot of shows that talk about hacking.
There's going to be a lot of shows that talk about different programming concepts and techniques.
But there's also going to be the occasional show.
Like I always enjoyed some of the shows that were done about actually survival.
I thought those were some great shows.
There was a show about caffeine one time, which I thought was interesting.
That's something that, you know, you got to admit is certainly in the hacking community,
and an interest in the hacking community.
So all those type of things.
Anything that's even loosely related.
We're even looking ahead to some music-based shows, some hacker-centric music, if you will.
Lots of different topics and ideas of what we can do for the show.
So if you're listening and you're thinking about, you know, what to expect for the show,
well, expect the unexpected.
And you might be surprised.
If you are listening to this, you might actually have some good ideas,
contact us, and let us know.
So you might actually have some ideas that would fit in really well with the rotation.
So let us know if there's a topic that you want to discuss or want someone else to discuss.
Right.
We've had shows about, we've had the music shows.
I believe not quicker.
And there was another one I can't remember off.
I thought my head is back in the archive.
That was just somebody playing music.
Yeah.
And it was, you know, hacker-related.
I believe doctors are used different tones.
And there was a show about Esplanade II, I want to say.
Like the language that's active from the back of the universe.
It's very interesting, not necessarily acting topic, but.
And I believe Plexi did some one-on-chat box and AI.
And we moved from the gambit with the topic.
So I expect more of that with hacker public radio.
Yeah. A lot of variety.
A lot of variety is what we're hoping for.
And as a listener, that's something that I always like.
So the more variety, the better.
So kind of keep in mind.
There might be some stuff.
Basically anything, it doesn't have to be hacking-related or about hacking.
It just has to be something that may be of interest to hackers.
Something that a hacker would enjoy listening to.
Even gaming.
A lot of hackers are into gaming.
Anime.
Stuff like that.
Maybe anime movie reviews.
I know there's a lot of people out there listening that say,
oh, I don't know much about hacking.
I can't contribute.
Well, I know a lot of you watch a lot of anime movies.
That kind of stuff I would find interesting, you know,
reviews of maybe some of the technologically themed or technologically themed anime movies
that are out there or shows and things like that.
Recaps.
Movie reviews.
Anything like that that's all the interest to hackers is perfectly acceptable as a topic.
So we don't want to put limits or caps on it.
Your imagination, whatever you can come up with, just contact us.
And actually, that's probably the next thing we should talk about is,
how do they contact us?
Enigma, how do they contact you, myself, or any other stuff?
If they wanted A, well, actually we have a couple of ways for them to contact us.
Why don't you explain?
Well, you can email us directly.
You have Stankblogger.
Stankblog.com.
I have my ETNH0 and enigma.gmail.com.
Well, you can go the hacker public radio route.
And there's an admin and hacker public radio.
And a feedback and hacker public radio.
Now, the difference is, admin is this, like, I have a sure idea
and I want to run it by one of us.
Then I would throw it to the admin at the hacker public radio.
If I had some type of feedback or question or comment about one of the specific shows,
I would email the feedback at hacker public radio.
And then myself or you or droops would throw that along to the specific host for that day.
Yeah, so if you had comments or feedback on a particular topic,
what we'll do is try to put that, we'll pour that on to the appropriate person.
Maybe they can do a follow-up episode later on in clarify.
The thing about this show is because it has so many hosts mixed in,
it's kind of hard to do email each episode and follow up,
like we've always done with BenRef Radio and other shows,
because the hosts are all constantly rotating and makes that difficult.
However, we do still want the feedback.
Feel free to send it in anytime you want to and it just may take a while.
It'll be probably an upcoming episode by that same host,
which may be a day later and may be a couple weeks later,
but we will forward everything through.
And also since we mentioned, in case it was obvious to you,
website of course would be hackerpublicradio.org.
So if you email admin at or feedback at hackerpublicradio.org,
you'll also be the two main email addresses.
And as an English said, you can contact us directly if you have any problems.
But admin will probably be the main point of contact for everything.
Sight related, show related, you want to volunteer to do episodes,
any technical difficulties, anything like that.
Most of it is going to slide in through admin at hackerpublicradio.org.
Finally, obviously this is a radio show.
Our goal here is to be Monday through Friday.
Is that correct? I'll let you speak. I don't want to put words in your mouth here.
Yes, we want to do Monday through Friday.
I usually don't put a shirt out on a higher day,
but that could change depending on the volume of shows I have.
We could theoretically go seven days a week if we have a volume of shows.
But again, we're going to stick with a five day rotation right now.
Yeah, things may change in the future,
but for right now we're going to do a daily show weekdays only.
So you'll probably get 20 to 22, 23 episodes a month somewhere in that ballpark range.
And the other great thing too is we've really gone to great lengths over the past few months.
Not only in reorganizing and putting all the show together and everything,
but we've contacted some great, great people who have volunteered already in advance
to start doing episodes at the show, have already given this their commitment
that they're going to try to do some shows.
So I think we have so many people that we're not going to have too much of a problem with that.
So you'll hear from Enigma and myself occasionally,
but give them a few samples of some other great people that are going to be on the shows
that have already committed.
So we've got a walker, Dr. Zigman, operator, Tom Aikon,
movie, Dan and Pat Run, the Wink-Wink Tech Show,
Bill Perro, Jason Scott,
Dr. Manojak from the packet sniffers,
CEO of the Creator of the Piracy Documentary,
Ten Valorant Peter from the Fresh Ubuntu Podcast,
and David Gibbs from a lot of Wink's,
a lot of Wink's link podcast,
which is a tongue twister and stuff.
Yeah, actually, Drutes and I were just on that show too.
So he's looking forward to do some episodes on it.
And as well as, you know, a lot of the people that had been doing DWH Tech,
some people have done an episode here and there,
some new people that are joining on as well.
So it's going to be just a lot of people.
I mean, just from the list you named there,
just from all those people I'm looking forward to hearing a lot of great topics from them.
So that should be something to look forward to.
So the website again, hackerpublicradio.org.
We've mentioned email addresses.
You know what to expect as far as the show content.
And in case we haven't emphasized it enough,
the most important thing to emphasize about hacker public radio.
And the reason that it's called a dot org is a dot organization.
This is a hacker community.
An organization that we're trying to get people together.
We want this to be community based.
We do not want this to be despite the fact that we opened up with a little bit of humor
and a joke about Ben Rev Radio.
This is a show in and of itself.
It's nothing to do with binary revolution radio.
It's nothing to do with radio freak America.
There's no strict format.
You don't have to obey any specific restrictions or content guides,
other than what we said as far as being adventurous to hackers.
But you don't have to do email segment and housekeeping unless you want to or choose to.
But it's important to understand that this is a community based thing
and everybody's going to do a show a little bit differently.
The other thing that's kind of related to that,
that I'm looking forward to,
and this is going to be really interesting to see how this works out.
Enigma is the mini series idea that we're going to be incorporating into the show.
Yeah, it seems to be a really good idea.
Troops is going to implement that,
and it should be quite interesting.
Of course, that would be, you know,
we do have all these shotgun type topics
where one day you may hear about C-programming,
and the next day you may hear about a new exploit.
On the next day you may hear some sort of web hacking topic,
and then a movie review or whatever, all over the board.
But sometimes there are running topics.
Like I know the best example that I can come up with is what Troops was talking about,
and that is some Linux distribution reviews.
Troops likes to try a bunch of bootable Linux distros,
and do a review who wanted to do some reviews of those as episodes of the show.
Well, it's a great idea that, yeah, those can be individual episodes
that wouldn't be cool if we could group them all together on the site.
And I guess for lack of a better word,
let's just call it a keyword system.
It's a little more than that,
but basically putting a keyword or a title for this series of reviews,
or whatever the topic may be.
Like I'm already looking at doing some database topics.
So I may record one episode talking about some database basics.
Troops may do one talking about a Linux review,
and then two weeks later I might do a second topic that actually builds on the first one.
I may do something a little bit more advanced on databases.
Troops may do another Linux distro review,
but we want them to be kind of tied back to the previous one,
especially if they build on each other.
Like I'd like to start with some basic database stuff,
and then as it goes on,
go into some more advanced things that build on it.
So if you listen to the later episode,
it would be really handy if you had listened to the first episode,
the earlier episode first.
So we're going to have these many series where we flag these
and put them together in sort of a stream in and of themselves.
So episode 7, 14, 18, and then maybe not until 32,
may all actually be part of one mini series,
and I'm making up the word mini series.
Although it's got a ring to it,
if you can listen to that mini series in order,
and have it make sense,
even though they may have been recorded and streamed
at different times on the actual show,
or on the actual podcast itself.
And I think that opens a lot of mini series and or mini series,
and I hope so you can even get to it two days,
but you're kind of neat with a little mini series,
but in theory, two of us could be doing a mini series
and be grouped into that same,
like I could do a little bit of this episode.
You could do this episode with the time together.
Absolutely.
So it is with the same mini series backpack.
Right. Same thing with the Linux reviews,
other people could do some as well.
Tie them all under that same banner.
And some of the more, I guess, stable
or long-running ones might be highlighted on the web page
so you could find them easily and searchable
and all that kind of good stuff.
All right.
So, again, if you want to participate, contact us.
And is there anything else that we want to mention
on this premiere episode?
No, I think we've covered it.
All I wanted to say was that shows usually we run about,
you know, five to twenty minutes,
but that's just a guideline, not a hard rule.
I have shows go for an hour,
like your state, but we won't go there.
Yes, we won't run the one yet.
And that's worth doing a couple of plastic episodes
to get the general idea of what we're doing for them.
They're actually going to be the same format.
So you can check that out and just be enough.
You have any ideas?
Yeah, and actually that's a good point to bring up, too,
is that there's no time limit.
Again, it goes back to what I said earlier about.
Whatever you want to format, however,
you want to format your show that's great.
And related to the mini-series,
perhaps you have a style that you always want to do.
Maybe you do always want to open up with,
I don't know, a joke or a mini-review or something
that you want to do on every episode that you do,
you have the freedom to do that.
So you can put those all together,
and it can all, not only is it a mini-series,
but it's almost like a show within a show.
So that's kind of an interesting possibility as well.
There is no time limit.
So, you know, some topics may be five minute episodes.
Some topics may be two hour episodes.
I really don't even think we have a maximum.
I mean, I'm not concerned with it.
So I guess we'll worry about that as the time comes.
But, you know, I can certainly see maybe some presentations
that are hour long being put on the podcast
or recaps of presentations, things like that.
And the only thing formatting,
and this is probably a good way to close out
this first premiere episode.
The only thing as far as formatting is
there will be a regular opening theme music
done by our good French Flicko,
which really, really is awesome.
I love it.
I have to say.
So every episode will open.
You don't have to worry about bringing your own theme music
or closing song or any of that kind of stuff,
just the content.
And then we'll take care of the rest.
We're going to put the 30-second opening theme
at the beginning of every episode,
like the one you heard starting today's show.
And then the full version of that same song
closing out every show,
and add probably at the end of each show,
depending on if we have sponsors or not.
And to help pay for the website and bandwidth
that this is going to inevitably cause on our server.
And that's about it.
So definitely just a Slicko for some great, great music.
I really like it.
And I'm looking forward to this show.
I hope everybody listening is.
And Nigma, thank you for doing all the work behind the scenes.
You don't get nearly enough credit.
So thank you for that.
And unless you have anything else.
No, I just wanted to shout out all the former hosts of TWAT.
And hopefully we can have most of them back for HDR.
And that's pretty much it.
I'm sure we will.
All of them.
And then some more.
And then some new ones.
And hopefully we'll be still around to maybe do it.
And update a one year anniversary and see how the whole thing went a year from now.
But until then that's going to be on my calendar.
There you go.
Until then that's going to do it for this premiere episode of HPR Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening.
And we'll see you next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack.
No, no, no.
This is all right.
We'll see everybody tomorrow on the next episode of HPR.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-E-T for all your hosting needs.
.
.
.

96
hpr_transcripts/hpr0002.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
Episode: 2
Title: HPR0002: Customization the Lost Reason
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0002/hpr0002.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 09:59:47
---
.
Welcome to today's hacker public radio I will be I will be your host Deep Geek.
Today's topic is customization the lost reason for switching to Linux from Windows.
Now we've all heard the mantra I'm sure that Linux is the free alternative to Windows.
It is faster and more secure and as hackers and geeks we all know about the faster part.
And the more secure part has been generally conceded by the public and yet Windows dominates.
So this must not be the driving factor and what makes people choose their operating system.
So you know I mean it wasn't for me either I used Windows 95 and then Windows 2000 for the longest time.
Having known about Linux and heard about it and being curious about it but never having gone through with it going through with changing to it until I encountered software registration.
I was actually doing my annual reinstall of Windows to make it go faster at the time and could not get free access to the Norton database and had to go out and buy a copy and register it in short form.
Because as we all know Windows just needs antivirus.
And that the fact that some web page out there could just turn a part of my computer off left such a sour taste in my mouth that I went ahead and became a Linux person.
So you know when we talk about advocacy of Linux first of all no one says you have to try to to advocate Linux.
You can just if you want it's very cool to just be a Linux person and not try to advocate Linux to your friends and coworkers etc.
And Windows 2000 is a solid operating system although because of software activation I never followed through with any of the post Windows 2000 Microsoft operating systems.
But for those of us who are asked why or want to advocate it I think we should work out more than just having you know what what sounds like a party line after a while.
So I'd like to talk to you about customization as a reason to switch.
I mean like I said I switch was a software registration but what keeps me in Linux is customization.
Now it used to be that the Linux did not have a GUI and then after that it used the Unix style X Windows system GUIs which were not quite the same.
You know they were a little bit more scientifically oriented than the home user GUI that Windows users have grown to love.
But now modern day and age and this is recorded in 2008 you know with the advent of desktop environments like KDE and GNOME.
It's very Windows-like you know it's there's something that functions as a start for on a menu.
It brings up a menuing system and you choose your application and for people who either have a tech support guy or have a big geek in the family who sets up their computer for them what would be the difference.
You know if they're using a desktop environment but the thing I advocate the reason I come back to customization is because Windows
it's something GUI customization Windows has theme ability in other words you know background colors wallpapers font selection you know windows and Linux has them both.
But Linux customization goes much much deeper and I want to tell you guys a story you guys listening a story about a friend I have who used to be more deeply into computers and he is now and back in me and my buddies windows 95 days.
We were a big fan of what they called the power tools suite in those days which was a series of small programs that allowed you to customize different aspects of Windows 95.
And when he went as time went on he went to XP Windows 2000 XP and I went Windows 2000 Linux I was looking to buy him a gift a Christmas present and I said gee we both like that that power tools.
So I went to the to my ultimate source for computer software bonds in Noble and I found a book and it was something it was called something different I want you.
The term power tools was no longer in Vogue but I found something that had a disk with a with a similar amount of programs years later my friend said to me you know I still use that book you gave me not for the software disk.
But in the back is an appendix that lists all the windows services and what they do and I can go into XP and disable the services that I don't use and make my computer go faster and further than it would otherwise.
And you know I was impressed with the statement you know this is windows strength I believe and I'm talking you know personally here is its standardization in other words people who are institutionalized in employment or education you know by compelling the members of the institution to use windows.
They get forced onto the same software suite and to the same issues as the computer management group within that institution want them to be on.
This is windows true strength you know the most compelling reason not to switch is because everybody at work or everybody at school has to use it.
Okay but you know I'd like to my answer to that is to remind people that the name of the device is no longer the main frame the main frame error is behind us.
We call them now personal computers personal computers not the boss is computer not build gates is system the idea is to have a computer for you you as a person set up the way you wanted to and if you are compelled to use windows.
You can only go so far like I said wallpapers plants you know but but still you open up your you knew out of the box computer and it's up a certain way certain services or demons as we call them in Linux start and you know they're all the same they are not personalized in any way.
They are not personalized in any way and then people some usually just change the wallpaper well Linux is different Linux is different.
If you don't want to use the standard GUI you can just change your GUI and they're you know the big two arcade and gnom and for those who don't know Linux these offer a windows like experiences you can put folders and bookmarks on your desktop as well as background wallpapers but you can get away from that those facilities actually run you know use resources.
If you're a speed hacker like me like anything and circumventing any limit and speed you know you want to get my attention talk to me about that I'm into it whereas a lot of people talk about hacker there think about people who are looking to circumvent the limits and security I'm a guy who wants to push the computer to the edge and so I don't want folders on my on my desktop.
To tell the truth I don't want a desktop because it's constantly being used sometimes I want to turn off the graphical user interface and just use the command line you know it's a personal thing for me.
In Linux you can you can you have your window manager which is what's responsible for you know allowing you to shift between different applications is sharing your desktop.
Then you can have a desktop environment which integrates everything and provides you things like you know files virtual files trash cans file shredders on your desktop drag and drop stuff.
And you can customize you can customize by not having a regular GUI. I for instance prefer to use as my window manager I SWM I SWM is a lightweight window manager it puts a task bar on your screen it does not support folders on the desktop does support wallpaper does support.
Click the start button and hit the menu and I can elect to use I SWM white which doesn't have the task bar and I find this to be a fantastic thing for me personally not only because it's faster which I like but because when I purchased my first laptop I discovered that I hate mouse pads.
I despise the mouse pad it is trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole and sometimes I feel like carrying around a spare wireless mouse and I SWM also has nearly every function of the window manager is mapped to a control key.
So I can open a closed windows by like pushing alt f 10 or something you know if I want to so that's great for me some other examples you know for people really much older computers that they want to keep alive and we all know that Linux is great for keeping alive and older piece of software.
There's fast lightweight window manager F L W M and this thing is boss you you you log in you type in your password and click log in and boom it's on you know that's because there's nothing nothing
nothing running in the background and with these kinds of window managers you usually typically take your mouse and push you know the right click button and your menu pops up that way.
But you know there's there's things that go further than that there is for instance a very obscure but used by a small clique of people window manager called rat poison.
And yeah it sounds bad you know it's like the old skull and cross bones you know image you know rat poison but rat poison is specifically a window manager for people who hate using the mouse device you know and they're used to the word rat and rat poison is actually a derogatory reference to the mouse.
So I have not used this one personally but you know I think it speaks volumes to the mentality of Linux community that they have a window manager just for people who hate their mice you know that speaks an incredible level of care you know for small groups within the Linux community.
Now for those of you who don't want the full window and experience but do like you know a fast and lightweight solution but want more than a bare bones thing a very popular alternative is flux box which is very popular especially in the hacker community.
There have been a huge variety of themes written for flux box there have been got themes hacker themes you know all kinds of things like that you know it allows very interesting use such as a fonts fading grad graduations and colors and menus stuff like that.
But flux box is based on black box which was a light white alternative I believe to window maker and window maker is interesting because it allows it allows what's called applet boxes which means you could actually say you want a clock something mind your disc usage and something
mind your internet bandwidth usage you can actually pull up and run in the background these little applets which show up as boxes in the bottom of the screen and flux box or wherever you like on the screen and open in window maker and they will be running constantly in the background.
I believe I'm 100% sure that this was the predecessor to what windows people sometimes call active active desktop.
One of my favorite applets I've used is myself one of my favorite applets is called is a fish monitor is a ducky fish monitor believe it was cold and this thing had a icon it would run constantly that had a water level.
Bubbles in the water and a duck floating on it and the more memory you use the higher the water level went up if you used all your memory the water went up to the top and the duck flipped upside down.
And if you used a lot of CPU time the water would boil to different amounts of of rapidity as you used more and more CPU resources I got such a kick out of that thing.
Fluxbox is really a cool thing for your artistic moods and on your login screen in Linux and it's normally called the desktop manager like kdm or typical defaults.
There's usually an options button for your graphical login that you open up and it's a session type and if you install several of these in your Linux system you can go in there and as you log in you type in your username and password or click it or click your username if you like and you can choose what kind of window manager you'll use for that session and log in and you're right in it.
It's a beautiful system that customize itself extremely to your individual tastes. Now the other thing I mentioned earlier about customization is background processes and you know I'm not a gnome or kve guy these are the big heavy windows like desktop environments and white windows they take a long time to boot when you have them fully installed.
So in Linux if you use you know I'm a Debian centric so in Linux is perfectly okay for you to never install a Damon process that you don't want.
Now for instance there's a new background thing called ever high client and it's supposed to be some alternative to sitting up a stack network at home.
I normally use only one box on my home network I don't need this I kind of resent you know if I have to install an application and it automatically loads this.
So on my laptop I'm developed I'm trying different things of software and I am learning what things install a lot of background processes and choosing light more lightweight alternatives to those things.
So you know I've chosen for instance not to load Katie at all not to load Katie includes a web browser called conquerer which is also a file manager which causes a lot of this heavy stuff in the background to load.
So I'm learning to use links to on my laptop so I don't have to install that heavy heavy thing on my thing. Now this has side effects you know because of this I don't have a file manager I'm used to.
So I'm learning to use what's more like a midnight command a kind of file manager you know and it works for me.
Now I'm not saying because you know you hear this kind of podcast or this kind of internet radio program that you have to be like me and enjoy customization for this level but I want to submit it out there to you in listeners as an alternative reason to switch from windows to Linux because I think the more reasons we find that windows doesn't have.
The more persuasive those of us who advocate Linux can be and that's the that's the beginning of the end of this episode of hacker public radio.
One thing and format that I deep geek your host for today want to have for my contributions is I want to have I want to close out with a geek tidbit I'm going to call it and you know it's just going to be food for further.
For further thought kind of thing a geek you should you should look into to learn about historically perhaps a geek high coup yes there are people who write poetry about the geek experience out there and it's open ended I can extend this in the future if I like.
So today's geek tidbit from the deep geek is a historical geek you guys really ought to know about his name is Seymour Cray S-E-Y-M-O-U-R space C-R-A-Y.
Seymour Cray is was born in 1925 and passed away in 1996 there's a wonderful Wikipedia article on him you can use as a jumping off point and he is the father of the supercomputer that's right big iron fast processes all that stuff that they don't really do anymore because there's so little demand for it and the market has been changed.
And the market has been changed so much people who want super computers now even even the company that is his legacy really supports clusters at this point but this is a guy who squeezed every bit of speed out of a computer he could.
It was a maniacal madness in the days when the mainframe died the mainframe had about as much power as a pentium and now we're up to pentium force and beyond and some of us are going on to 64 bit processing.
Back in the day before the personal computer was a business reality they needed faster and faster and Seymour Cray built computers with this company that was so fast that IBM had to say we can't compete on the basis of speed.
IBM owned a Cray they used for benchmarks but IBM strength you know it was kind of like you know the Microsoft has become the IBM of today they really you know were a sales and support organization more so than you know a high speed computer company.
You know one of the Cray computers one of his innovations was when you use supercomputing and you compute that fast you generate a lot of heat and one of his big innovations was the use of Florent for cooling and Florent was a liquid developed by 3M for medical uses and it was a non-conductive liquid that was meant to have medical applications for filling and gaps.
When they did organ transplants I believe but what he did was he submerged the insides of the computer was actually a water type tank and filled with Florent and used a circulation of Florent to pull the heat out of the computer when it ran fast and the fast the computer ran the more the Florent bubbles.
And that's how come many of the Cray's were nicknamed by their computer operators as bubbles and excellent book and I read it and got a lot of my background information about Seymour Cray and the big computers was called Superman the story of Seymour Cray and the technical wizards behind the supercomputer.
Author Charles J. Mary M. U. R. A. Y. Pubbier 1997.
A excellent and fast read for those of you who are looking for book reviews and that concludes this episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening. This is the Deep Geek Signing Off.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all your hosting here.
Thank you.

409
hpr_transcripts/hpr0003.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,409 @@
Episode: 3
Title: HPR0003: Lost Haycon Audio
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0003/hpr0003.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:01:15
---
.
.
.
Hey, christen fresh, I am Morgan the low-tech mystic, and you, well you, my friends, would
be listening to Hacker Public Radio for January 3rd, 2008.
Today's topic. Lost audio from Heycombe.
All right, thank y'all for tuning in for another wonderful. I got to use those
air quotes. Wonderful. At least when it's more delin' doing this. Now the
wonderful episode of Hacker Public Radio. Thank y'all for inviting me into your
audio players and here we go. Today's audio is going to be some pre-recorded
audio. I'm feeling a little bit under the weather so instead of doing the
original audio I'd plan for. What we're going to do is I'm going to play back
some audio from Heycombe, which was a use those air quotes again. It was a
computer conference that the Infonomicon Computer Club. We put together, we
had the fancy idea that it'd be fun to do a computer conference like out in
the middle of the field like where everybody comes and camps out instead of doing
it like in a hotel. So we decided to do a little test run this year in
Mississippi and basically what it boils down to is just an excuse for a bunch of
a bunch of us to get together and camp out in a beautiful area of Mississippi
during some beer and hang out and kind of just unplug for a couple days and
just enjoy one another's company. It was a really good time. We had overall
a good time. What we're going to do now is I'm going to play some audio of one
night. There was alcohol involved obviously. We decided to go on a midnight
geocache. So if you're familiar with geocaching then you know what's up. If
you've never heard of geocaching then you need to be hitting Google right
now and typing in geocaching but basically what geocaching is is people go
out to random locations either in the woods or in urban environments and they
hide things in a little boxes. Sometimes camouflage very covertly and they put
the coordinates of the item up on a little trail or a website and then give
you clues and you kind of have to give a starting point and then you follow the
trails and they vary from cash to cash and it's something fun to do if you've
got a GPS receiver it's definitely something to check out if you don't have one
and hey be something to look into GPS receivers are getting cheap that'd be a
good way to get out of the house and have some fun and still not betray the
nerd instincts there so without any further ado without any further ado
please enjoy this audio of myself droops and five big tramsing around the
woods in the middle of the night in the middle of the Mississippi as I
probably say 400 times in this audio clip like beep that out but you guys get
to enjoy it yeah this was just a little background I guess before we go into
it droops is from Mississippi or was and he had a bunch of geocaches that he had
done in the area and he had several night geocaches which meant they were only
really applicable to be done at night they involved using a flashlight and
reflectors and you'll hear more about it but it was a really good time so
basically it's the three of us myself droops five big tramsing around in the
woods I grabbed my laptop as we were going down to the geocache so here I've
got my tablet PC and tramsing around in the middle of the woods and it was just
kind of it was it was a really fun time so I hope that comes through in the
audio with nothing else and yeah nothing else I don't know somebody else will
be here tomorrow
and time coordinates right now well for time it is 1148 on Friday in November
9 2008 and we're currently at Haycon and I am looking back up buddy left
with that little geocache that we're getting ready to do in the middle of the
night which is involving reflectors and we're looking for the reflector as we
speak to mark the geocache
and it's low like a high foot so we're riding around right now I'm not sure how
much battery life I have I hope this doesn't die in the middle but I'd like to do
a little see what we can't find here maybe this will be horribly terrible to
listen to and maybe this will be entertaining and this is the good stuff
that goes on here at Haycon in the middle of Mississippi in the middle of the
night and you thought it'd just be all about penises
and it's a little doubt reflectors and so we're looking what color are they just
white we're looking for a clear reflector like a bicycle reflector for listeners
at home perhaps like a thumbtack reflector yeah as we what's our kind of
velocity 25 miles an hour as we spotlight trees on a gravel road
and I'm going to pause for the silk of our battery life here because we are
recording with all the acidity and hopefully this isn't clippin too much
out and around yeah I've gone on super low power mode so we can't
reflectors are something to the gravel you will be back in just a second
hey guys we are back and it is currently just to give a little roster here it
is myself more going groups and five big and we have successfully located the
reflectors and troops has located his walking staff perhaps he will speak
softly but he always carries a big stick that's right in a me run with the
laptop but so here we are in the middle of the night and these reflectors to
give you an idea of the size of the reflectors these these look like
thumbtacks basically so like a thumbtack that you use to to post posters up on
your wall but so as we swap through the woods in the middle of the night here in
the middle of Mississippi in the middle of nowhere what's what you explain a
little bit if you will about this geocache what's involved and motivation
behind it what are what are we doing here trotting through the woods looking at
reflectors okay people hide shit and they post coordinates for such things with
their GPS and they think it's a really cool spot or really cool hide and this
one's a night cash which means it's really hard to do during the day because of
the reflectors obviously and what I did this I was with my dogs and my wife and my dogs
got down the bottom of the still and broke something and then we ran through the
woods chasing after them putting reflectors on trees until we got pretty lost
and then we said between a good spot so basically we were living a wild moment
we traced with if you will Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs yeah and hundreds of
people before us have also lived this moment excellent and so do we do we have a
it it was merely there weren't a lot of there weren't any nightcashes in the
area other than what I hit really far away from town so one of when closing
the town to people to get to explore do I find it really hard to find a good
moment no good reason and a lot of people come out here at night looking for
these things and I hope it doesn't disappoint
and this one has a surprise ending shall we say
but some people figure out these guys didn't I wouldn't have
let's see now it'll be instructions on this or to follow the reflectors until you get to a big
like x marks the spot kind of thing and two were definitely not an x negative but from the
school right out of recent college I know that two points do make it back to if we can find
two other points maybe right here and to our left we know it's a whole lot more dots
so somebody's been sneaky or the the quarry that was being chased on this particular day was uh
well I'm providing this cash for a second to be a complete jackass but I'll tell
it over the whole tree whenever you see two dots in the tree that means um
so not only is it shopping through the woods in the middle of the night but we're also
it's like a it's like a little puzzle yeah you can you can see one two three four five six dots ahead
of you correct so in a way it's just kind of like we're getting to uh
to live life for a few scant moments as if we were uh say our favorite hero from the legend of
Zelda maybe mr. Link was stomping around the woods in the middle of the night or
other uh suck set adventures mr. Link would definitely be our favorite hero from
wise and Zelda seeing it how they're such a wise selection
there's a good ravine there and some bars
and if you're lucky that's all you'll take home from hay con
and
and uh yeah do we have quite this little ravine here and the laptop we're going to pass the
laptop got it oh got it all right into bars
and oh it burns it burns there we go
too bad we can't see the same thing for syphilis
hopefully we won't find that avoid the blue bales just just like in Zelda you know
oh
we continue on we're um we hit another one of these really far out of town where it was raining
and i got piss drunk we had a bottle of coke and a bottle of jack and we just traded the whole way
there each taking a sip and then go into the next one
all right so here as we come along the trial and we see two dots so since we've had our little
spoiler hint we know to look for a change of direction there which we see again which is
once again crossing the uh the big change which is a little more little friendlier this time
but it was frankly called it's raining and while you and i went to hide this thing is drunk and
apparently we went in a bunch of circles and in reflection
so it was a uh especially mean one because the geocache was actually a tree
suspended from the road and in daylight you can do much pure sight but at night time no one's
going to be like oh what's that hand in that rope in the tree
well there's a bit of a jackass name a bunch of hills up and down slippery and uh
a lot of people went out there couldn't find it but it just made it better
better for you and maybe not so better for them possibly but we noticed here our dots have come
to another symbol which appears to be um across we've got three vertical and five horizontal
and we also have a fallen tree with a tack in it the uh we must update our quest
the thumbtack
I wonder pretty damn well built because these are several years old in the woods
excellent so this cache has existed four years it's rusted all around it
the thumbtacks and the same path
so as we approach the tree here with the uh the cross on it
you notice that uh she's also right next to the road
and uh i don't know all these reflectors yeah are they oh there they are i'm right across this tree
again hints yeah the big circles but uh so possibly we've discovered another signal that a cross
means maybe you're crossing something oh yeah
the thumbtack through the woods here and running into each other
it's the middle of the mile and the middle of the second one the middle of the darkness itself
so far uh our listeners at home while they i guess listen to us if they're still listening
listening to that it is yeah and then and the clipping that that's me carrying around the uh the
the tablet as if it were a pizza pie i'm trying to have a Brian Fessig crap that we are
you're pretty brave do you have a skin on that tablet no don't
which which was bringing me into our next point for those uh at home listening if they'd like to play
an at home game perhaps we could uh wager which is more crazy the fact that we are in the middle of
the woods and uh random Mississippi or we are in the woods in the middle of the night which is
flashlights or the fact that i am in the woods in the middle of the night
my laptop is logging around i'm trying not to fall in trenches and
at least you can't fall in the syphilis right okay
all right all right yeah all right we got it going across another trench here i'd like to really
apologize for i'm sure all the clipping that i'm getting but uh we've noticed that oh there's
our for a second there it looked like we lost our tap look at that hand really but our our
direction our direction our vector because we have both momentum and direction so we have a vector
but there's a necessarily mean we're going anywhere right now the first rule of geodash is first in mark
where you went into the woods that yeah you can find a way back to be a thing
yeah which which is a good point to uh bring up that if you're going to take your laptop out into
the middle of the woods you know it might have been a good idea to bring the GPS receiver you know
in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night in the middle of the bryers or your friendly
or the friendly sharper neither which are present tonight
oh we do hey there's a mushroom and it is a i don't know it is not a type of mushroom that grows
in the area that i'm from so i'm not familiar with it as there are many edible and non-edible
along with magic i'm not just talking about magic but i'm talking more about being able to
live off the area that you're passing through and so if you had to be stuck out in the woods because
you've got lost with reflectors because you at least know what to use they wouldn't kill you then
why big notes is a big cluster we notice some particular shape let's see
now this cluster perhaps the cluster fuck
i'm gonna stomp
let's see we have a stomp they kind of looks like a cross
or more of a plus what can i say bucket there's a bucket so i can see
reflectors i hope that's all the vehicle okay so we have cleverly just walk day
have it on you've been listening to this minus a little bit of editing out
i'm walking in a big circle so at least you're catching this uh
along with using our creativity to find the bucket that's right on the ground in front of us
i also get a little exercise so we've had the container possibly upgraded let's just
bet that's kind of neat somebody's going to come behind the geocache and i don't know is that
is that a good thing yeah there's probably something wrong with the container or someone sold the
container no oh so we have apparently someone is replaced to container with a container that's
in a container so they have upgraded so not only that they enjoyed your cash but noticed that
you know hey oh something's going wrong here and let's uh do something one of the positive
things about the geocache community here Mississippi is they will look after other people's stuff
so as as uh we open the the container if you will five it will you explain what you're what
you're seeing there in uh in the second bucket uh in the second bucket you have your basic uh
geocache goodies of course in your zip lock bag we have the logbook and uh it's like a little
fun coin okay cool and then of course uh on the inside of the container you have your various
trading trinkets uh you've got a little like tupperware thing very small tupperware
might have been something in there at one point uh you've got a nice bag clip for the Mississippi
Department of Agriculture at agriculture and commerce and uh in case you're wondering lester
spelled junior is the commissioner of that and uh we've got a little key ring here uh some cars
we had a cash that was a name plastic container yeah it was one of the oldest caches in the state
and they do a lot of control burning around here and apparently it was found after a control barn
mm-hmm and the gentleman working for the park service that found it looked into what was going on
and actually replaced it with a metal ammo can and much better than it had been so not only
maintained but upgraded but upgraded because i mean fire and a melt stuff what inside this
so yeah let's let's open this uh sip lock bag which has our well-preserved uh toy coin
and a memo book and let's let's read through here it was a cash fairly replaced bring up 2007
and push mataha found it and webchimp found it and since it's been replaced two people have found
three people we have another thing so what are the dates that it's been found on October 20
October 21 and uh it's September 2
so all three recent finds after they would have an ink pen and there was an ink pen included
in the bag awesome so let us uh we record the fact that we are located this geocache
right now who we are and that we're at the beginning of the uh the broadcast here but I will
verify the current time coordinates it's based time coordinates it is now 1210 on November 10th 2007
spectacular so our sign your name though temporal shipping and that's currently my geocaching name
trying to have uh the same name in different organizations because as we learned
earlier our hero link you know i mean he he changed his name up you know every game wasn't the same
you got to do something to keep it fresh so otherwise uh gaining can easily track you down as
you're reborn through the many generations of Hyrule and uh you don't just sign an
name if you want to write something inspirational or anything you're welcome to do such things
take a moment to uh inspire the young here oh that's kind of convenient how the truck's right there
that that it is as seen as how it was just brought up that uh we didn't have a GPS device in that
we could be stranded after a walking very far in the woods following reflectors that are no longer
facing the direction that we were walking so i'm going to leave a note here in this pattern and say
uh more gallon was here and take on hey con beta because this is a beta test of our con
and uh so alphalus this summer mean you living together i guess so yeah yeah so i don't know
what night's what syphilis is released candidate one okay yeah yeah okay and uh yeah
enjoy what's something that you die of an organ trail
oh syphilis you know syphilis this is Terry this is Terry oh dude okay apparently this one should
be called dysentery no we're gonna replace everything back into the bag and try to hide it better
when we found it because apparently it's not supposed to be just laying on the ground even though
when it is on the ground and right in front of you it is still a challenge to find it
thanks this tree and it was um probably kind of far would like a lot of
and uh it looks like it had a little termite damage though yeah it's definitely uh
i'm not gonna miss your steam car whatever these three it's free and uh cash and
handers probably tell me metal ammo cans are usually uh pretty left over by the red necking people
all right let's hide this thing good let's off this ground or that that was it was what
looks like we can see it was buried several inches yeah covered with leaves yeah and not
to mention that we have the fact of darkness yeah to aid in this uh endeavor exactly see and once
again we find ourselves just like Link we're traveling back and forth between worlds of lighting dark far away from the cash
yeah
so we've placed a uh a nice log on top of our can and they covered everything up with the leaves
which were not taken directly from the area of the can because that would be kind of obvious
so and we're making it quite more hidden so not only do you have the darkness but you have the
evil powers much like Ganon working against you now too too too many sticks is obvious
so if the leaves are good leaves are good too many sticks look like you're hiding something under
some sticks so we have a professional tip here we had a um cash and a city that apparently was near
park and some young folks found it and decided to steal it and move at about 20 feet
covered out with stuff and hide cigarras inside of it still in their individual wrappers
which they apparently didn't know what was going on because they were hiding a metal container in
the woods from guys who for a sport find metal containers in the woods so uh yeah it was found
pretty quick and I had a bunch of free cigarras that's it excellent
so we are we are now we have completed our quest for the geocache five they get successfully
re-hidden okay very skillfully and we are now going to go see a cemetery it's kind of makes
it a little bit more sense in the middle of the night I don't know whatever I don't know if
anything makes sense at this point but you know lack of sleep makes full fun stuff and hopefully
fun listening so we're going to walk back to the truck and uh maybe we'll pick back up here if we
can locate the cemetery uh if we can find the reflectors I don't know do souls have reflectors
I don't think they might in some form maybe maybe some spirit orbs I don't know we don't have any
real uh real-time technology here but no I don't just rambling oh thank you
okay
brothers we're driving down the road and I'm sure we're clippings some more we're going to get a
little description here of the uh the cemetery that we're headed towards
all right this cemetery this whole park is very here in a place I still live and after I
quit living there um I drove past and on the big highway going home from it on out and this
cemetery is on the USGS map and it's several acres large and I really think they had just
there they were like it's sitting here so it took me a long time to find this thing
and took a lot of research and noticing the way the land is laid out to figure out where they
would build a cemetery because in my mind building a cemetery on the hillside is really dumb
right so the first thing I did was check all the flat land inside that big area they'd
marked out
and it wasn't there so then I went looking around and the trip was up and down and I had friends come out
and eventually we found where we thought a house had been so we said maybe the cemetery is near
this house you should be a community here a hundred years ago there was a post office in there here
and uh there's nothing now just a couple of mobile homes in the old shop
um and the cemetery only is map I've only found two or three tombstones here but they're
cool looking and uh it's nice to walk down this nice easy walk excellent so not maybe searching
for reflectors no just searching for buyers excellent thanks for the tour
thanks lord hey no problem there's a very creative pie that damn near a pumpkin find it now
now it'll take you i'll see tomorrow that is the dryer ant kick trip
and um which are all still better than syphilis
they're all still better than syphilis the guy that I hit it with um I think stole it hey there's a
shotgun in the ship yeah is he got kind of mad at me one day and the stick that I'm carrying right
now there was one very similar to it hitting hitting at this cache in its inception and I think he wanted
it and um he usually went up there and took it and took the cache because as we'll find out
tomorrow no one stumbled upon this randomly a week after it was hidden
and I actually found this cemetery at night with a flashlight on the way home to see my girlfriend
I just stopped by I thought it did my hat I know where it is and it was exactly where it was
after months of searching it's not constant searching but
so preparation was this just like a uh a moment of revelation when you just
sitting class daydreaming and I realized hey a picnic that's where it is and that's what it was
and we'd actually walk through the area but we were looking for a much larger cemetery
um according to the park lady it had a gate and uh she was referring to it completely different
when apparently she couldn't read the map that I showed her I think what's this cemetery look like
where is it she's like oh it's got to be gate but there's one about the same spot
if you turn south off of this road on the left hand side so I turn the door I think I'll win my
okay but you're off according to the map you're in the cemetery right now you've been so
since we parked and uh we found on the left here what we thought was a house it's a little way
out here and I've yet to figure out where exactly this road ends up to walk till we could walk
anymore and it just kind of keeps going like this and it's a road and this just clearly looks like
an old road for what I don't know but it's deterioration-weezing way okay across from this
across the little part graveyard that will road ride is a continuation of this road
and see how it's like these banks really high right this is an old road that this is wagons on this
fire and uh I think this is the road that just continued on to the next town and now we you know
drive past it 65 miles an hour you know right over there and it lays forgotten that it used to be
this road I mean the banks now taller than we are all right we're looking at a bank that's
eight feet nine feet yeah at least in the dark and both sides and no reflectors no
reflectors
which walking and cemetery in the middle of the night is always fun
that's good that's spooky
I used to remember he never wrote you a trouble pod that is true
and if I came across some guy that decided he was going to shoot me for best classic on
federal land then by damn I was going to get the shit out of him as I'm running away
so
so while we're out here walking around and well after midnight in the middle of the night
searching for uh the destinations to old forgotten roads, cemeteries and stuff like that
one maybe led to the question of not only why you do this but what would inspire somebody to
go out what what's what's the what draws you to do this what got you interested in this kind of
thing because it's definitely interesting and we clearly are out along with you sharing
in the experience and enjoying it so but what gets one interested in um student of history and
this is a lot of forgotten history and I can't really you know do a lot of history discovery
you know just as a college student are now self-employed dude we're going all the time
so I can do simple things like this
yeah I think we definitely won't pass it go a little farther um
this is history that people don't know that we can find and it's like um
discovering something again which is what history kind of it is
um there's a lot of cemeteries that now they were destroyed or the buildings around
were destroyed during civil war or the aftermath of the civil war
okay during the day I think it's good obviously good I think
well let's see trees but Mark I don't know if that's now quenched in on um if you notice the bank
kind of slopes like somebody's walked up this a bunch times and during the day you can see a lot
better the trees are just a little different like someone have planted them for a purpose
apparently somebody's hutted through here because yeah we do see you
so now we find ourselves let's get on another quest
possible hunting trail possible geocache
possible uh vampires zombies
six yeah awesomeness six and we have a cemetery
and we have one two markers three so we have one it's almost kind of like a small obelisk
it's about three and a half to four feet no three feet inside or on space and then uh
the regular tombstone on September 11 1861
civil war started 1861 and died 1909 good deal it was amazing apparently
as we noticed by the symbols on the on the tombstone and this is the one that is
as I thought from a distance was shaped like an obelisk but it's not an obelisk this is violet the
wife of Monroe Stevens who died august 28 1905 63 years old gone but not forgotten
the people that weren't supposed to forget are apparently dead too but she clearly is not
forgotten because we are here and in some way in this any bitty little stone next to it
initials is the center and an m and an a it appears uh let's say maybe her granddaughter
is this one which is buried on top of the old lady
very popular thing
and this is the only tree I've ever found are three
for this you know multi-acre cemetery
you know if there's anything you're in the day and night
oh this is definitely very nice first thing
and it's definitely a nice refresher from the Worgum of Roleman for the day
well um I used to ball here for USGS mapping service
and a map corn or we would identify things to be to go on map my government makes maps of
everything and they are strategic maps with nothing else um we used a compass to orient where you're
going you need something to identify on the map that you can see so like a church or a water tower
something has a reference point yes the guide you clone and they like to keep these things
updated this church is coming up a dead people don't move and there's a lot of
cemeteries on these things and I was really into the cemetery thing and I thought hey
I can get free maps and I can add all these cemeteries to these USGS maps
but apparently after I got the information they don't give a shit about cemeteries
which makes me believe this is not a map of the area this is a strategic map
that if they ever have to take them as a sippy they want to know where the the high points are
the strategic locations yeah or where they want to be and not necessarily what the history
what was once here
which I think if they're going to have a quad map of everything in the United States they need to have
stuff on it like they build they you know put little squares where there's houses
but they can do that satellites and I think this should keep track of where cemeteries are
just a point in sight the old nasal live-in was defied or defiled because it was one of these
hidden old lost cemeteries and someone stole all the tombstones and built a land development
you know housing development on top of it and during the project they discovered they were
building it on top of the graveyard fortunately and then they found all the tombstones
dumping the creek very nearby and the lady that told me this story I think had defiled the guy that
had started you know the land development and she felt it moved all the tombstones I think she
had moved his in the whole night because you know what goes on comes around and I'm not into
desecrating the dead but you move some ice tombstone to be a jackass makes some money then you
don't really deserve to have one which also goes back to you know I mean put yourself in
some golden rule you know do you want others that you would wish done to you yeah
she's a one crazy lady as apparently the three of us are yeah
um scroood this is a ninja night school radio sorry no no ninja night school long since
died okay leave that died um let me sure it died just if you go back and check the date as we
have uh we've actually experienced two days in this recording our temple shifting all at once
as we uh this is a supernatural supernatural yes this is a supernatural sound tour of uh the
acorn experience well tomorrow night I will take you all to a uh massive abandon cemetery
that tells us we're here in this little thing and uh we'll go around and read all the names
well I'm definitely gonna have to recharge my laptop battery so that we can share this
experience with the listeners if there are any listeners yeah all this recording them out in
the cemetery we've been making pretty good time for everyone you know flat ground since then
that's the trail that it is a very old road which is it's kind of interesting and we're walking
along some parts are very soft much like sand well worn in some some places are more like a like an
old cracked stone pavement you know just want a natural ridge is that what I'm seeing here
is it stark oh well there's those but it goes you far on either side you're gonna fall down
the hill okay like that tombstone or those gray yards were or they go go it was on the hill
which leads me to believe maybe there were more tombstones and they've either been knocked over
walled away right and up barefoot tram from the through there looking for them and those are
all three
and the battery died
well I hope everybody enjoyed the audio of the midnight rambling in the woods
and if nothing else well you have a new party game so everybody take a drink anytime I mention
Mississippi or being in the woods double shot for syphilis you know you guys build on from there
and guys are creative bunch but nothing else thanks for tuning in today for a hacker public radio
and stay tuned for another fantastic episode no air quotes needed when it's not me and wonderful
episode of hacker public radio coming at you tomorrow
thank you for listening to hacker public radio hbr sponsored by caro.net so head on over to
c-a-r-o jacking tree for all the folks in the
you

83
hpr_transcripts/hpr0004.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
Episode: 4
Title: HPR0004: Firefox Profiles
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0004/hpr0004.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:11:36
---
.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Peter Nicolitis from the Fresh
Ubuntu podcast and I'm your host for this episode. Today I am going to cover how to
move your Firefox profile from one computer to another. Now if you're like me,
Firefox is your preferred web browser, regardless of what platform you're running it on.
I run Firefox on my Linux desktops, my Macintosh machines, and my Windows PCs.
So one of the things that I like to do is maintain a consistent set of settings
across all of those machines. And I'm not talking about just bookmarks but add-ons
and all sorts of other preferences. All of these things for Firefox are stored
in a single directory. So you can basically, as long as you know where to find it,
move your entire Firefox profile around from one computer to another.
Now it doesn't matter whether you're working on Windows or Mac or Linux,
you can take all of your extensions, your bookmarks, etc. and move them to any
computer that you're using as long as you know where to look for them.
And that's the trick. To find your Firefox profile on a Mac,
it's pretty easy. Basically if you open up your Macintosh hard drive,
then open up users, your username right there will be your home directory,
and then library, application support, Firefox, and profiles.
If you have only one Firefox profile, then there will be one folder there.
And it usually is a random name. It's composed of a bunch of random letters and numbers.
On my computer, for instance, my Firefox profile is named IJAWGK1.Default.
That's on my Mac. So now you know where it is.
Now if that's the profile that you want to move to another machine,
you would just open up that folder, grab all of the files contents,
and then maybe put them on a thumb drive or copy them across a network
or store them in some centralized place, and name it something meaningful like Firefox profile.
Then what you want to do is find your profile on your other machines.
So on Windows, for instance, my profile is located under C,
slash documents and settings. My username, just Peter on my machine,
application data, Mozilla, Firefox, profiles.
And again, if you have one profile on your system,
you're going to see a directory under there, which again will be a random gibberish.
Now it's not going to be the same as what it was called on the Mac.
So here, for example, if you are moving everything out,
you don't want to take the entire directory, the entire profile directory,
that random alpha numeric string, you want to take whatever is in that folder,
and then overwrite whatever is in the other machines folder.
And what I generally do is I clear them out first.
So on my target machine, I'll delete everything that's in that profile directory,
and then just take the contents of my source machines,
and then put the profile directory and put them in there.
So once you've found those, let's see, we should cover out how you find it on Linux.
Now on Linux, the profiles are a little easier to find.
In your home directory, there will be a hidden directory called dot Mozilla.
And under that, you should see your profile right there.
So again, just look for a default, or sorry, something dot default.
So on my Linux box, my profile was named VKUXFIT.default.
The name doesn't matter, as long as you can look at it
and identify it as a profile directory, then you're all set.
So once again, what I do is I generally fire up Firefox one time on a new machine,
and then I go into the profiles directory, so I know where I'm copying my files too,
and I delete everything that's in there, and then I go back to my old Windows box,
or Mac, or whatever I'm copying my profile from, grab up all the files,
and either copy them over a network or stick them on a thumb drive,
and then just dump the contents of that profile's folder into my target.
The next time you fire up Firefox, it should look very much the same as it did on your original machine.
And this includes, if you have it configured to open tabs for sites that you were last visiting,
you'll get the same tabs opening up.
All of your cookies will come along, so your stored passwords are all there, and all of your add-ons.
And that's the biggest thing that I find is that, you know, if my save preferences and stuff are there,
it's just like coming home every time you fire up your browser.
It's really nice not to have to reconfigure everything.
So that's it. That's all you need to do to keep your Firefox profile with you
when you move from computer to computer.
You can do the same thing for Thunderbird, which will probably cover in a future episode.
And there are also ways that you can use tools such as R-Sync to keep your profile synchronized with you automatically.
But those are topics for another day.
So that's it for this episode.
Until next time, you can follow me at fresubuntu.org,
that's the fresubuntu podcast, or on my blog at pn72.com.
Thanks for listening and have a great day.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
HPR is sponsored by caro.net.
So head on over to caro.enet for all your hopes and needs.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.

237
hpr_transcripts/hpr0005.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,237 @@
Episode: 5
Title: HPR0005: Database 101 Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0005/hpr0005.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:12:22
---
The
Hello everybody, this is Spankdog and this is Hacker Public Radio.
On today's episode we're going to start a new series, a new in-depth series on databases.
We're going to start off with some very basic understanding of what databases are, some
basic terminology, and with each subsequent episode we are going to build on those fundamentals
and go into more detail as the year progresses.
So we're going to start off today talking about some very, very basic terminology because
it is very important that you understand some of the basic terms and exactly what a database
is.
It is in visual concept very simple but there are some details.
Some details that a lot of people may not know or understand about the databases as we
know them today.
First thing we really should define when we talk about databases is, well, the first word
or the first part of the word database is data.
So what exactly is data?
And it kind of may sound like a silly question but there is a common misconception people
throw the word data around very loosely but they're when they actually mean information
and they are actually two different terms altogether.
Data and information are not necessarily the same thing, not usually the same thing.
Data, if you want to go by a textbook definition of data, data is that which is extracted from
a compilation of data in response to a specific need.
All right, well that's a little, okay, you can think about that for a second if you want
to.
My favorite definition is to say that data is, it's a collection of facts from which conclusions
may be drawn.
These are like those minuscule or insignificant little events, tiny details that you store,
like in the case of computers, for example, log file details, Apache logs, any kind of
log file details, the time stamps that are in there, any observations, anything that's
stored that's just this minuscule insignificant data that by itself doesn't really have a whole
lot of value.
That's what data is.
So if you go out, you can do a little research and look up data and information.
Be careful.
If you look up data on you, you're going to get a lot of Star Trek references, data played
by Brent Spiner, but I digress.
So like here's an example of data.
Let's say that, let's say I were to sit down at, I don't know, a mall or something with
a pen in the paper and I logged details of every person that walked in such as their
height, their gender, what kind of clothes they were wearing, what color their hair was,
things like that.
This is data, little bits of information that in and of themselves, okay, so what?
A guy with black hair that's five foot eight walked into the mall, that's not really that
big of, it's not really that useful information.
Unless you're looking for that particular guy, but I digress.
Now to make that leap from data, which is insignificant, unapplied material, we come
to information and again, people throw these two together, but they are two different things.
Information is really applied data.
Information is the result of processing, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the
knowledge of the person receiving it and that that's a quote that I think is pretty
on the money.
It's basically, well, I kind of said it earlier, it's application of data, useful extracts.
For example, let's use what I just said earlier, I'm standing at the mall logging people
that walk in and out of the mall and their information on it, well, that may not be all
that useful individually, but let's say that I was doing some sort of market research,
that information could be useful to somebody who was, I don't know, maybe selling clothes,
they wanted to know how, what the average height of most people is, you know, census type
material.
When you actually analyze all the data and come up with averages, average heights, what
total percentage, like male versus female, maybe you'll, maybe you'd be surprised to find
out that 75% of people that come to the mall are males age 21 to 31, I don't know.
You would not know that unless you actually sit down and gather data and then analyze
said data.
To come back to something a little bit closer to home, probably for a lot of our listeners,
let's go back to Apache logs.
If you are looking through your Apache logs, you might find you're getting a lot of new
hits from a particular website, you know, if you see one hit in your log, it's no big
deal, but you notice a pattern or a certain percentage increase of something that people
are finding on your site, that becomes useful information and that's the difference between
the two terms.
So applied data is what I think is the best way to talk about information.
So now we've gotten that out of the way, the next question, of course, is where do you
store data?
Well, in a database, that's what we're talking about here.
So database is another term that can be thrown around very loosely because fundamentally
a database is a very simple thing.
A database is a very simple generic term that describes a collection of data.
That's it.
Collection of data, data again being those tiny little bits of material that you gather
over time that are logged, that are observed, whatever the case may be.
It can be a spreadsheet, a CSV file, comma, separated value file, even a text file, a
word document.
It doesn't really matter.
You can have a word document that has all of your favorite recipes in it or something
like that.
That's a database of recipes.
It could be a spreadsheet of your CD collection or DVD collection or something like that.
That is a database that is a collection of data that's compiled and stored in one place.
That is the most simple example of a database.
But that's not really the way most people use the word database.
When you think of databases, especially in large scale applications or websites or things
like that, it's not quite that simple.
To run any kind of application or even web applications, even whether it be a forum, content
management system, anywhere up to, I don't know, the DMV or the IRS are running huge databases.
They're not storing them in text files.
They're not storing them in Excel spreadsheets because there's limits on those things.
When it comes to programming, it's difficult to read and write to those files because there's
no organization.
You have a text file.
It's literally line after line after line of information.
If I have a line of text file with 10 lines of data, let's say I have 10 people coming
in out of the mall and I logged their height and weight and level of attractiveness or
whatever the case may be.
Yeah, there's 10 records there.
I can look at that with my eyes.
I can parse through that data with my eyes and I may be able to pull out information
such as, hey, but everybody that came in was less than six feet tall or more than six
feet tall.
It's easy and you can do it in your head.
But what happens when that text file or that list goes from 10 people to 100 people?
You still may be able to glance at it and notice some patterns, but it makes it a little
bit harder.
What about that 100 jumps to 1,000 or 100,000 or millions?
And when you're talking about Apache logs and all the hits, you're talking of millions
of records on any decent size website.
When you talk about the internal revenue service and government databases, you're talking
out millions upon billions of records of data.
So you've got these huge collections of data, but if you were to put all of those into
a text file, and let's go back again to my text file of Mall example, I log 10 people
coming into the mall and you tell me, okay, well, tell me what was the tallest person.
I can look at it with my eyes.
I can pick out, okay, I see the heights, that guy's the tallest.
This woman was the tallest, whatever the case may be.
If I had 1,000 people on that list and you asked me to do the same thing, well, that's
going to take me a little bit more time, isn't it?
I'm going to have to go through page by page.
I'm going to have to point to the screen and go, okay, right now this guy is six foot,
one, and let me go, there's nobody, oh, here's how many six foot, three, that's the tallest,
now I have to keep going and looking further and then I have to keep, and by the time I've
looked through a thousand, it's taken a long time to get the information out of that data.
So you can imagine when you get into millions and you ask the question, who is the tallest
person, what is the average weight, things like that, it's not something you can do in your
head and it's a little bit trickier, and obviously that's where computers come in, they
can be very helpful with that.
Even there are also limitations of there when you start talking about millions of records
of data, you have to have an efficient way to read that data.
I can have that text file for example, or a comma separated value file, and write a program
that will go through and find the highest or the tallest person based on the height that
I've recorded, the data that I have on people's heights.
Well, if I write that for a very simple program to read and write from a text file which
is basic programming of any language, one of the things you learn in any basic programming
class, you'll realize that it's going to have to parse one record at a time, starting
at the top, it's going to keep going through.
You can write maybe some algorithms to help it out, but your data has to be sorted and
there's a lot of other factors, but trying to find that proverbial needle in a haystack,
even with a computer program, is not efficient because you have to keep reading and keep reading
and store stuff and information, store data in working storage variables and in memory,
and then keep looking through the rest of the data, and you have to look at all one million
records, even though the second one, ironically, may have had the highest height or the information
that you want to use.
You still have to read all the rest of it, which is not the most efficient way to do that.
Well, this is where something called a relational database, or actually, let's just take that,
let's just say a database management system comes into play.
A database management system helps organize all of that data to make collecting that information
from that data simpler and easier.
An example might be, let's see, maybe you wrote a backup software, backup system that
backs up your hard drive and writes it as a file name and automates the whole thing
and dates it and everything.
Something that would maintain a list of that data and that you could easily look up, okay,
here's the data, I want to go back to this backup file.
Earlier I mentioned having a CD collection, if you had, there are custom, you know, anybody
can put it into a spreadsheet of some kind, but there are also applications out there that
are custom designed to store a lot more information about your CD collection and you can look
stuff up more quickly and easily because they have something besides a text file behind
and they actually have database engines, database management systems to help you read and write
that data and there's many different theories by which these databases can operate and different
methods of storing and accessing the data and the most common type of database is what
I was just kind of referred to a minute ago and that is called an RGBMS or relational database
management system and this is the most common type of database and when most people say
database these days, this is what they're referring to.
I understand what I said earlier, database is in a very simple collection of data, fundamentally
that's all it is, but when people use the term database now and they say, oh, it's all
in the database, it's stored in the database blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they're usually
talking about a relational database management system or some sort of database management
system.
Some examples of relational database management systems are oracles, probably the biggest
one right now, Microsoft SQL Server.
These are two of the big commercial products, DB2 is another one, but also included in
that are open source and other freely available databases like mySQL, Postgres, Postgres SQL,
database and too many more to go into, but any time you hear somebody refer to database
they're usually referring to one of those.
Now what a relational database management system will do is it basically takes all of your
information and we'll get into more detail in some of this in future episodes of the
HPR of the series, but suffice it to say their relational database management system gives
you a lot of tools and a very powerful engine to store all of the data.
Again, we're using very simple examples, a list of people walking in and out of them
all, but what if someone else in another state altogether has a bunch of information that
they've stored and then you buy a database from another company and you want to merge
all that together and do some analysis to see if there's any information useful information
out of all that data that's been collected, see if you can find something there that's
useful.
A relational database management system is a powerful program from maintaining that database
and will allow you to go in there and run queries and you've heard the word query before
you're querying the database or asking the database literally is what it means, but
S-Q-L is a programming language to choose to interface with databases and help pull back
information in a timely and efficient manner.
Instead of, let's go back to what I said earlier about having a million records and you
ask me to find the highest height out of all of those.
Well, manually it would be tough to do.
If I wrote a generic little C program, command line or something like that to find me the
highest one, it's going to have to read every single record of data and if the second
record had the highest data, it still has to read all of the others, assuming the highest
height, still has to read all of the others and it's not efficient.
A database management system has a lot of functionality built in that will make it much
faster to read the same information because it's stored in a different format and it's
easier to read and access that data.
So that's probably a good place to stop with this episode.
We're going to go into more detail about how those things are stored, talk about some
concepts like indexes and foreign keys in general and some different ways of accessing
databases and probably some examples along the way.
But I think that's a good stopping point for today and hope that brought a lot of people
up to speed and cleared up a few misconceptions about database terminology because it's important
to understand those basics and those fundamentals because a lot of people will use the database
and they don't realize why.
Don't blindly buy Oracle for an application you're using or force it because maybe you
learned Oracle in college or maybe you learned my SQL because of some open source app.
You really may not need it.
Sometimes it's perfectly fine to read and write from a text file or a comma separated
value file or an XML file.
Sometimes you don't need a big database engine.
Sometimes you may be using a text file when you should be using a big database engine
or some sort of database engine because it will make your program more efficient and
faster.
So understanding all that and keep that in mind that will help you make decisions in future
projects of whether you need a database, what type you may need, what size and if it's
really going to be worth your while to do so.
So tune in for future episodes in this many series.
You can always find those on hackerpublicradio.org and if you have any questions you can find the
contact information on the site and I look forward to seeing you guys in the future episode.
Thank you for listening to hackerpublicradio.htl-sponsored by carrow.net so head on over to
the C-A-R-O-L-E-P for all your personal needs.

419
hpr_transcripts/hpr0006.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,419 @@
Episode: 6
Title: HPR0006: Part 15 Broadcasting
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0006/hpr0006.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:14:14
---
.
You are turned into 16 to 80 AM, the Ocho.
The North County's latest Mark 15 radio station.
The Ocho is technology 24 hours a day fully automated.
The Ocho is music.
Music that you've never heard that you would like to hear.
The Ocho is an information.
Information news, whether gas report, the Ocho is fired.
It is fine.
Hello!
Hello!
This is Dawson Man.
And Zach.
And we're the Packest Nifers.
And you're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
So, yeah, I guess this is our first edition of Hacker Public Radio we're putting on.
I think we're going to talk about part 15 broadcasting.
Non-licensed broadcasting, basically.
Licensed free.
Yes.
Sticked by the power rules and get all the equipment you need and then pump up the volume.
Yes.
So, okay.
So, I guess the first thing question is what is part 15?
And if you're ever seeing pump up the volume, that's not really has anything to do with part 15.
Yeah, there's nothing to do with it.
I just wanted to make the reference because it's not as glamorous or as exciting.
But it's still just as fun as Christians later.
Happy Harry Hardon.
No.
So, yeah.
So, part 15 is the part of the US federal code that governs our radio wave power and emissions and such that allows you to,
part 15 is what allows you to use a wireless device without a license, like say cordless phone or things like that.
You know, your little FM transmitter from your iPod, your car stereo, that's part 15.
Also, governs the RF output on your VCR.
Yes.
Yes, things of that nature.
Or your DVD player, rather.
Yes.
Jump into the current decade.
So, yeah, yeah.
So, anything that uses electricity creates some RF noise, but it has to be contained in a certain way and has to meet certain guidelines.
Only certain things are allowed to actually emit the RF and enough for other people to pick up.
And there's some special guidelines here for part 15 AM broadcasting, which basically lets you get a half mile to a mile away, basically.
We've had some experience this summer.
We set up our own station for about nine months or so.
Yeah.
It was definitely a good project to see exactly how far you could get, how advanced you could get using the bare minimum, basically as much as you could possibly do on the AM frequency without needing a license or any other special permits or FCC tracking.
There's also guidelines as to what kind of antenna you can use there.
And we'll get into that in a little bit.
Because you can do a lot with your antenna to make your signal get further, but they severely limit that to make sure that you're not getting across the counting with your part 15 unlicensed rig.
Because you don't want to be dominating a channel that the FCC could be making tens of thousands of dollars on to another bigger company.
So I guess the first thing we're going to, well the second thing I guess we'll dive into is why would you want to get into this?
I don't know, a couple of different reasons is like, you know, for support of your community?
Yeah, I've seen high schools and I've seen churches use these local, basically campus-only radio stations that are for the immediate area.
Or some kind of small, maybe a trailer community, I've seen them used to promote community awareness and current events and things like that.
Yeah, and another place that's popular, the road signs that you see on the side of the highway or the interstate that tell you to tune into such and such, you know, 5 30 AM for news and traffic updates.
Sometimes local municipalities will run those.
And that's actually that falls under a slightly different section of the rules because they can run a little bit higher power with those.
Still pretty local, you're only talking, you know, 5 miles range or something with something like that.
Another area in which you can use part 15 broadcasts, especially mainly radios, like for specific events, like I've seen special races, stuff like that.
They could be doing commentary or stuff over a low frequency, maybe something that's having like a row of speakers or maybe a band, they could be re-broadcasting out for the parking lot or something over a low power frequency.
Yeah, yeah.
So specific events, stuff for your community, you know, traffic updates.
And then also that the main reason that most people get into it is just for fun, I think.
That's definitely why we got into it.
But there's other aspects of playing to that.
We wanted to, you know, provide some type of community service, you know.
And there's not really no variety or profit unless you're going to be saying things you're not allowed to say and you're going to be blackmailing people over it.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can really get away with it that long and under part 15 rules, you know, you wouldn't have that large of an audience.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, a lot of times I guess we'll move into transmitters and stuff, you know.
There's a couple different transmitters and your transmitter and your tenor set up governs how much range you have.
And they'll advertise you can get two to four miles.
Yeah, right.
If you've got a lot of antenna experience, you might be able to cram, you know, two miles.
And you live on a mountain?
Yes.
So the transmitter we went with was you get these things as kits.
Well, you don't have to.
The one we got comes as a kit.
It's AMD 3000 by SS Tran.
100 bucks, you put it together yourself, you know, two hours one evening, four hours, depending on your soldering skills.
And it was, I found it to be a super easy kit to assemble.
The directions are top notch.
So if you're kind of not so sure, you can do some kit electronic assembly soldering.
But you're not sure if you want to do like an actual radio versus like a little dice game or something that you've done in the past.
This is a very excellent kit to assemble.
The directions are top notch.
You know, the guy is easy to work with if you have trouble.
The guy that runs the company that sells these.
Other transmitters out there.
There's of course the Ramsey kits, Ramsey electronic sells some AM transmitter kits.
If you have one, you can play with it.
But from one, everything I've read, the AMD 3000 is a much better kit for the same price.
It has a built-in compression, modulation and gain.
You might not know what those things are immediately, but you can play with them.
And you'll understand why those things are important.
The other, the top of the line radio for AM, part 15 AM broadcasting is called the Range Master.
However, I'm not really sure where the market for this is.
They try to sell it as, you know, it's a pre-assembled kit.
It's FCC certified and all this stuff.
I'm sure it's a wonderful transmitter.
But for 800 to $1,000 for 100 milliwatt transmitter,
I just, you've got to have a lot of money to be able to throw away at your hobby if you can afford one of those.
If you're able to actually turn your part 15 station into a profit, you know,
a for-profit company or something and you're selling advertisements and stuff,
yeah, you might be able to justify one of those, but most hobby enthusiasts, you know,
don't really have an interest in something like that.
So I think we would heavily recommend the AMD 3000.
So the next next step, the transmitters goes antennas.
And if you're actually going to try to get some range with your transmitter kit,
what you're going to want to do, you set up a mast in your backyard and you do what's called a whip and mast setup.
You're going to build yourself a base loaded coil.
It's basically a piece of PVC with wire wrapped around it.
There's going to be directions on like a lot of different sites.
The site that sells AMD 3000 has some really good directions on how to build the base loaded antenna.
Your transmitter has to be attached to the base of the antenna.
So you've got to actually have your transmitter in a weather proof enclosure mounted on the pole.
And that's because you're limited to an antenna length of three meters for part 15 AM broadcasting.
And as well as a hundred milliwatt output into your final stage.
Now, the thing that's going to be, you've seen a socket and a steel legal star, you know,
the antenna we've ever advertised doing, it's going to take a little work.
It's not an exact science.
The AMT, the S-Train website, has pre-users and directions on how to drill some holes
and wires coming through and to seal it up really good.
40 bucks on hard disk and hard disk and PVC.
And then you just run your coax and your power openings.
Your power for the plants.
And I'll say that it will take a little bit of work if you have a friend that's a AM radio operator
or someone else that has some experience with antennas and electronics.
It'd be very good to help out with if you're good and you don't mind messing around with electronics at all.
And it's really not a whole lot of electronics that involve, per se, to set up the antenna and get it tuned.
But it will test your patience.
And you know, just give it some time.
Come back to it when you're ready to mess with it a second time, you know, whatever.
I don't know. I'd probably spend maybe the course of like two months getting ours tuned
where it would actually get, you know, a quarter mile.
So, you know, fine.
I think we got what a half mile from the transmitter.
So a mile distance coverage.
About a half.
Yeah. So, well, a half mile in one inch direction.
Oh, yeah.
So, a mile total, maybe.
Yeah. So, you know, it'll take some work and you need a good grounding rod.
I'll get you, you know, self an eight foot grounding rod.
All the directions are on the side and there's a lot of different help.
And we'll have some links on the HPR site for...
I will tell you that it is hard getting that grounding rod in.
But it's even worse getting the grounding rod out.
We tried to use a floor jack to pull it out because our station, Zach, Zach is moving
and we had to take down the antenna here.
So, we never did actually get it out of the canal.
I think that's going to be under ownership of the new tenets.
Hopefully they pay mind to it when they move the yard.
A chopper stopper.
Yeah, an eight foot grounding rod sticking three inches above the surface of the ground for the mowers.
The mower loses.
So, okay, so that's enough about antennas and stuff.
So, the next stage, once you get the hardware down, that's when the real fun begins.
And that's your station automation and the content.
The first thing we use for automating the station, sure you can set up wind amp and with a playlist,
but that's not really dynamic enough.
If you want like weather and news and stuff to happen at specific times during the day,
probably what you're going to end up with is a software package for when it was called Zera Radio.
It's free, it's not open source, but it's free.
It's a very, very dynamic piece of software.
And we did a number of different things with it.
What kind of music did we use?
Oh, we used a whole mix of stuff.
We used CID remixes.
We used various techno.
Other free licensed songs.
What I enjoyed and had fun with is a great deal of original Esperanto music.
And that's found various places on the internet.
Because usually from unsigned people that have no problem with you putting their music online
or on the air and to share with everybody else because as they figure it, it's free advertisement.
Yep, yep.
So, you know, I'm definitely a big fan of the CID remixes.
And I think that there's a place called RKO or remix.quad.org.
And we used most of their archives.
We had about six months of music without repeats.
The other good place to look online is her for clocked remixes.
They've got some good songs also.
And a lot of NES songs and game remixes for many of us.
And I do urge people unless it's stated.
Don't play the guessing game.
Actually, email the artists of the song.
The little extra work really pays off because they'll more than likely be.
Sure, yeah, use my song here some more.
And they'll give you a lot more music than you could have ever asked for.
And another thing that I had a lot of fun with as far as content.
There's a little site out on the internet called gasbuddy.com.
And the gist of it is you go to the website.
And as you drive on your way to work, on your way home from work.
You see the gas prices, all the gas stations as you pass.
So you write them down.
You log onto the website with a free account.
And you update the site with the gas prices from around your town.
And everybody does this.
So you end up with a pretty reasonable listing of gas prices around town on this website.
So I've got a script that I wrote that downloads all this information.
And then performs a text to speech on it.
Now, of course, they post the data as image files.
You have to do a little OCR there to get it into text and then you can read it.
So I had a pretty, pretty robust script that would read.
And it would mix in different comments and stuff.
So it wasn't just a static, same exact thing said every day.
And the next thing, of course, is reading RSS feeds for slash dot,
AP news, Russia today, and whatever you want like that.
So you have your morning ADM news for people.
You get your tech news.
You've got some more less tech-centric news with the AP world news and stuff.
I also would also do the current events calendar for our city website.
They had a eGov package and they would put news and stuff.
So it would just pull their page and read the current news for that week,
the events on the town calendar.
Gosh, I think I even had some more stuff.
I would do weather updates.
I was reading weather.com's news, although I'd rather switch to weather.gov
and get the data in a more static, better format.
The last thing that I was working on, I didn't have time to finish this before we took the station down,
was I found someone on an IBM site had a couple of purl scripts that would read
weather.gov radar image maps.
It would actually be a couple of purl scripts that would read for a set of coordinates.
You could tell if there was rain over a specific set of coordinates.
So I was going to use this as a...
His scripts were set up to email you when weather was bad,
weather was approaching your location and when it was directly over and stuff.
So I was going to turn this into an automated weatherman and have it reading
a current weather situation for our one-mile radius.
It is now raining in this one-mile area, although I think our users would have seen it at that moment.
Yeah, but it was a cool feature nonetheless.
So someday when we get the Ocho back up on the air, we will have weather updates as well.
And the last thing I was trying to do was tie it in to the emergency alert system.
And there are a couple of different ways to do that.
I wanted to tie in actually a weather radio and have it be able to switch the audio feed over when storm,
when there is emergency situation for our locality.
It may end up probably it would be easier to get the information off the Internet
and I started trying to find that.
But anyway, so if there is a tornado, people would still find out about that
even though they are listening to your little AM station rather than a big commercial outlet.
So a lot of the fun that we had was on the station automation instead.
There are other things that you can do such as bumpers and tags for your show
that you can really spend a lot of time and have a lot of fun with.
I know that is what I had the most fun with was getting a firing up cool edit pro
and making just a whole slew of commercial station identification tags
show promotional bumpers and just other weird things that could be played on there.
It really gives a personal touch to your station.
And you can have a pretty professional persona with a pretty unprofessional setup.
And I will also go in of course it is a lot more fun I think to actually make your own bumpers
and jingles and stuff.
However, you can actually go and all the stuff that you hear on your local radio station.
All those voice actors can have websites and you can go and for 30 or 40 bucks
you can buy your own tag and they will do all the soundscaping and everything
and make it sound just like a professional station if you want.
If you want to buy two or three of those commercials at 30 or 40 bucks a pop
but it is a lot more fun I think to make your own if you can be creative.
I guess the next last thing I guess is some of the lore of you versus the man,
the man being the FCC.
This is the point where you get your inverter, your AM transmitter
and your computer and you ride around in your Jeep and run away from the box trucks
all at 200mW.
If you are going to be running from the MIA you will be running over power.
Yes, about 200mW.
100mW is the legal limit for a part 15 but yeah.
Once you hit that 2 mile mark all hell breaks loose and you have little yellow tracks after you.
So realistically the only time that the FCC is going to care about your rig is if someone complains.
The FCC only responds to complaints.
How do you get a complaint against you?
Well that is by either a running or stomping on another channel,
another frequency that someone's already got a station on which is a bad idea anyway
because that's going to kill your range.
You want a station that a pre-selected frequency where there are no stations that you can pick up
or at least the frequency with the fewest stations that you can hear because there is pretty much no
completely empty frequencies anymore.
Even though they are outside your range, you can still hear that Spanish station in the background or something.
We have had experiences with that although we had set up and were enjoying our frequency immensely
and then come to find out what Chicago or somewhere we had a radio Disney that sprouted up.
And so we were constantly doing battle with Mickey Mouse and his crew of thugs.
But I think that will subside now with the move and finding a new place for the radio station.
Oh what was the other thing I was going to bring up?
Well Zach thinks about that interference at sucks, your range is going to change day to day.
And another way that you get complaints is just having generally offensive stuff on your station.
You got to remember even though you're underneath, you know, you're under the requirements for a permit for the FCC,
you are not above the FCC guidelines in their code of decency and things like that.
So you need to be sure that you pre-select and that you pre-list into stuff that you're just putting out of the air
because you don't need any soccer moms coming and finding their kids listening to something
they're a little AM radio that they didn't want them to hear.
And it's like if you've got a station that's dedicated to overthrowing the government,
that will get you more attention than you want.
If you're doing that, you don't even care about being part 15 legal anyway.
So we'll get a better transmitter.
Again, more other things to get you noticed.
If you set your rig up on a station that's already, a frequency that's already got a main station there,
well the other thing is if you do that unintentionally and that's where harmonics come into play.
Harmonic is a multiple of your existing frequencies.
So what you're going to want to do is have a scanner available.
And let's say you set up on, you know, like our channel was 1680 AM, that's 1.68 megahertz
and you want to multiply that times 2, I don't know what that is off hand,
but then you want to tune your scanner into that frequency and see can I pick up my station there.
And then multiply your base frequency times 3.
And then tune your scanner into that channel and listen there.
Can you hear your station on that frequency?
And that's why that's where pirates really get themselves into trouble
because they don't really understand or they don't know about what they're stomping on people outside
of their, you know, the broadcast band.
Like if you're doing a FM station and let's say you're, you know, you're 100 megahertz
and you've got a harmonic at 200 megahertz, well that's into the air band.
That's actually above the air band, but that's not a frequency that you want to be messing with.
Especially if you get into the, you start bumping up against ham operators
and you're getting into a ham band, they will track you down quickly and with high prejudice.
You know, the only thing that makes angry old men even angrier is not when all the food's gone at the buffet.
It's when you're stomping all over their ham frequencies.
Don't do it.
Yeah, so, you know, harmonics that's something to watch for, get yourself a scanner,
multiply your frequency by 2, by 3, by 4, by 5, check up to the fifth harmonic, you know.
Also, just tune around your existing channel like, you know, 1680 to down to 1670, 1650
and see how much splatter you're getting around the existing, your main frequency.
And see how far away you're getting that splatter.
If you're getting a little bit of splatter right next to the antenna, you know,
where you can pick up your station up on, you know, several kilohertz down from where you're broadcasting.
Yeah, it's not too bad.
As long as you can't pick it up very far away, you know, with a regular receiver, hopefully you'll be okay.
And if it's a regular kit, you shouldn't have, you know, too much trouble if you've got a proper operating transmitter kit.
Also, another thing to get into is state, state and a few bumpers here and there that you are a part 15 radio station.
Maybe don't go and need not to be doing this every five minutes or something.
Maybe one or two times in the middle of the night and early in the morning.
You know, state that you're a part 15 radio station.
Maybe even quote the section of the law that allows you to be there.
Don't give people any reason to think that you are a pirate if you're just doing part 15 stuff.
And I'll pretty much leave you alone.
You know, the sound, like, professionality in the sound of your station also plays a key role.
Because if Joe blow down the road that just likes to call the feds just because, you know, here's you on there.
And, you know, he thinks that there is just a couple of kids making noise and this, that and the other.
Then he could call and he could have somebody harass you.
But if it actually sounds like a legitimate station and that really has this stuff together, it'll deeter him from saying anything because it's probably not a fight that he wants to pick.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and remember, you know, you're having fun, but it's cool to be a positive contributor to your community also.
I know I really wanted to run a lot of bin rev and other podcasts and stuff, but quite frankly, that wasn't going to be possible.
You know, a lot of f-bombs dropped and stuff and that's fine.
That's the time to censor it for part 15, yes.
Shame on you dirty birds.
So, you know, that's that's some a lot of the considerations trying to be legitimate and being a good station, you know, and all that.
So again, you know, the FCC, they're only going to come after you if either some type of complaint against you and that means either a you've got content that is somehow offensive to someone or be your, you're on a frequency that you're not supposed to be on or, or the extra options, you know, if you're actually even accidentally running an antenna.
That's too too efficient, which is a basically either it's too high or it's too long or you're running too much output power, but we're assuming you're trying to be compliant with part 15 here.
So, as long as you're within all those things, you really shouldn't have any problems as far as legal repercussions.
Again, the FCC, they're really, if they do come knocking on your door, it all depends on your demeanor how they're going to react.
If you're trying to be legitimate, they'll recognize that technically they can claim your transmitter and everything it's attached to, which is your house and they can be real heavy handed.
However, generally reading a lot of the enforcement and stuff, as long as you're trying to be legitimate and you immediately reply to their letters and stuff, you're probably, you're not going to have any serious fines or repercussions, you know.
You're attempting to be legitimate, you're attempting to fall within the guidelines.
If they tell you to turn your system off, you don't have a lot of choice with that at that point, but you can comply with that and then try to come up with another way to be compliant with the rig and still go and be on the air.
Again, as long as you're trying to work with them, trying to be a positive influence, they'll definitely recognize that I think and play a part in how they respond if there are complaints.
I think that pretty much is the gist of part 15 broadcast and what you can do with the technology and the laws at hand.
I don't know, we might come up with some more to talk about next time.
There are other types of low power broadcasting. The reason why we went with part 15 AM is because that's really the only way to be legitimate and get enough distance to get more than just your house covered.
Part 15 FM, basically the little iPod transmitter to your car radio is the most powerful as you can get.
And that's just the way the law is broken out and that's because they don't want a lot of people being able to reach lots of other people without some type of licensing.
Without some kind of governmental monitoring, they don't want you talking to anybody else.
The other thing, television, that's the next frontier. Technically, if you're a ham radio operator, you can transmit a slow scan, which is basically a single frame pictures, back and forth over some higher UHF frequencies that your TV can pick up.
However, that is again, that's a ham radio transmission that has to be part of a two-way conversation between two operators. It's not intended for broadcast.
So in other words, you have to be responding to someone's goatsy with your tub girl.
And obviously, technically, there's really no way to actually do low power TV broadcasting the way you would think of like a regular TV station.
It's interesting that it's really not that hard. It looks like to get on the air with a transmitter, just surfing eBay TV transmitters, broadcast transmitters and stuff.
If you've got a little bit of cash to splash around.
The other alternative, if you really want to try to dance around part 15 rules and stuff, they do have UHF transmitters for, let's say, sharing a video source from one satellite box to another TV in your home.
That would be a good place to start. It's basically just a little transmitter with a couple click buttons in the front to choose your station.
You could possibly crack the top open and see what could be done with the antenna setup, things like that for them that's deviating from the part 15 design of it.
But it's still keeping it at that power.
And again, like 2.4 gigahertz, that's why Wi-Fi lands, wireless and 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones.
That's another band that's allowed to transmit at a little bit higher power than other frequencies without a license.
And so that's why they've got the little Zach's talking about the little AV transmitters. You can send audio and video with those on reach your local community with those.
They have to have a special receiver unit. Just the next 10 receiver, you know, to receive that.
Yeah, I think we've nailed about everything on that we can think of a talk about.
Yeah, I think that's about it. You'll have to look for more episodes, maybe if we decide to venture a little into video transmission.
We'll definitely have more episodes in regards to that.
Yep, yep. All right. Do you have any words for the wires go to?
Don't let your means fan.
So, all right. I guess I'm Dossman.
I'm Zach.
And we're the packets niffers. And this is our first edition of Hacker Public Radio.
And I guess we're signing off.
Yes, have a good day, good night, and God bless. Don't get arrested.
We'll leave you with some of our bumpers for our station, the Ocho.
Every day, 8 a.m. and 12 noon, the Ocho presents the latest slashed-out headlines. World National News from the Associated Press.
News from Russia Day. And upcoming events for the City of Bloomington, only on 16 a.m.
The Espranto Music Out.
In the mornings, only on 16 a.m. the Ocho.
You're listening to the 16 music remix, only on 16 a.m. the Ocho.
The people have spoken and they want their means.
16 a.m. presents news brought to you by Russian Today.com.
You're listening to the 16 a.m. Ocho.
16 a.m. the Ocho.
News and War Station.
Hello and welcome to the Glass Republic for Sunday, January 6, 2008, generated at 8 p.m., only on 16 a.m. the Ocho.
Is it that land, the room is standing still, but you are still spinning? Let's get spotted.
Glass prices are subject to change, and are not guaranteed for accuracy.
At Speedway located at 3585, West Stable 46 and North Smith, like the prices, $3.09.
At Speedway located at 3000 and 21 East St, and Kingston Drive south the prices, $3.12.
At Speedway located at 2700 North Walnut Street, near suburban lane the prices, $3.12.
At Speedway located at 503, South College Mall Road, and East Second Street, the prices, $3.12.
At Speedway located at 3,939 West St, and South Curry Pike the prices, $3.17.
At Shell located at 2650 East St, and South College Mall Road the prices, $3.18.
At BP located at 7,314 North Walnut Road, and Stable 37 the prices, $3.19.
That is the Gas Repo, for Sunday, January 6th, 2000 and 8th.
Tune of the hour and hour, for the latest gas prices, from around town only in 1680 A.M., virtue.
I would like to send shout outs, to Indiana Gas Prices.com, my homeboy lamestore roads, for my OS, image magic and go see L, for my character recognition, and festival for my lovely voice.
Please, silly gas body, or see others for kids.
Thank you for listening to Hector Public Radio.
This is Joe, sponsored by Garrow.net, so head on over to C, A, R, O, dot, N, E, T, for all your hopes and needs.
Thank you.
Thank you.

86
hpr_transcripts/hpr0007.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
Episode: 7
Title: HPR0007: Orwell Rolled over in his grave
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0007/hpr0007.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:12:53
---
Let's dance!
Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I will be your host for today, Deep Geek.
Over my several years I have enjoyed many rants while listening to the podcasts and the
internet radio shows that we've come familiar with.
And I hope you can imagine my surprise when I found a documentary that showed how
the situation all these rants were about came about to be.
I have enjoyed listening to the rants of dual about how the media has become a wasteland
about how lousy clear channel communication stations are and how we should become the
media.
I've also enjoyed thanks rants about the corruption of our government in Washington and how bad
the RIA and MPAR.
I was searching through some bit torrent search engines to see if I could possibly find
out about a documentary mentioned on binary revolution radio about George Orwell's life.
But instead I found something else that I thought was so informative to us as Geeks
and hackers and I found it only because it had Orwell in its title.
So I want to give a detailed review of a film that documents the merging of the following
elites in American society, the financial elite, the political elite, and the media elite.
And the film I want to review for you today is called Orwell Roles in His Grave and came
out in 2003.
It was directed by Robert K. Papas and many notable people appeared in this documentary.
There's Charles Lewis who is a former 60 minutes producer, Peter Mitchell Moore, a former
editor of the New York Post, Professor Robert Mick Chasney, founder of mediareform.net.
Michael Moore, which we all know as a documentary director and is also an author, a representative
from Vermont, representative Bernie Sanders, U.S. congressman, Vincent Bugliosi, who's a legal
scholar who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson and wrote the book The Betrayal of
America.
And I will go through several main points and also list several of the scandals that were
documented by this film.
Main points that the media is now a special interest, a lot like the tobacco and automotive lobbies,
they function a lot like the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's novel 1984, although
it is enhanced by their usage of what we call valorization.
Valorization is a term that refers to the fact that if enough people repeat the same
lie enough times, people will believe them no matter what.
Another main point is that the financial elite and the political elite have merged.
Most of the powers that be has dropped to less than 25% of the American people trusting
their government.
This figure, this 25% is a third of the same figure at the height of our country's Vietnam
war scandal.
So this figure which is so low is the symptom or the problem that caused the symptom of
people just refusing to vote, people feeling that they have no representation of Washington
that they cannot have a voice in our government.
That's because of this.
The consolidation of the media, whether it be the thousands of radio stations or the hundreds
of cable channels, does not represent a diversity of viewpoint because they are owned by the
same small number, less than a dozen of media companies.
That the media is the largest lobbyist in Washington and they also have a unique ability
to sense with politicians at will.
And also the media is owned by the wealthiest percentiles of our country.
Conservatives and Republicans are funding think tanks which create a future, our country's
future, right ring propagandists, let's have trouble saying that right ring propagandists.
This constitutes an a form of ideological warfare against the American people.
And this is where our interests should peak that the internet is being changed from open
access to closed access.
By the telcos, the cable and media interests.
This from a movie in 2003 which successfully predicts the reasons that will be given
to try to sell this to the American people.
This has become known as the net neutrality debate.
So this documentary, you know, it elucidates on those main points, but also shows those
main points through several scandals of recent times that it documents.
The scandals such as the Bush Brother Collusion to disenfranchise voters in Florida in 2000.
The involvement of the Supreme Court justices to squelch all efforts of a fair vote count
in Florida on behalf of a party which so often speaks of state rights.
The October surprise to out present Jimmy Carter and replace him with the Republican president.
Also documents another scandal how FCC regulations being changed against the will of the American
people to allow for the mass purchases of radio stations by monopoly style companies such
as clear channel communications.
How legal bribes actually work for both FCC officials as well as congressmen and senators.
Also the subsequent ability of senate organizations to financially punish those who publicly disagree
with them.
So I think this documentary is a fantastic documentary.
I hope you all will try to rent a coffee or borrow a coffee from a library or perhaps even
purchase a coffee to check out and enjoy.
And that I hope this enhances your understanding of the world and which we live in.
Today's geek tidbit, I promised you guys a little bit of poetry so I'm going to share
with you a geek high coup written by Charlie Gibbs.
Eris have occurred.
We won't tell you where or why lazy programmers.
Thank you and that concludes today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.

226
hpr_transcripts/hpr0008.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,226 @@
Episode: 8
Title: HPR0008: Asus EeePC
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0008/hpr0008.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:14:33
---
Music
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is an episode of Unknown Proportions since I
do not have it pulled up and I can't tell you. But we got a special episode for
you today either way. We have a special guest that would be Red and Threx, if I
pronounced it correctly. Say hi. Today we'll be talking about the EEPC. Aces is
little, ultramobile, not ultramobile PC. It is a complete fully functional laptop
and we'll also be talking about its use with Backtrack 3 Beta. So Red, if you don't
mind me calling it, you don't have the EEPC correct? Not yet. Not yet, but you're
planning on getting it. Do you know the differences? We'll just go over the
differences real quick and it might help you decide which one you want. They
actually have four models out right now. The 4G in surf and galaxy, I'm sorry,
the surf and I guess it's galaxy. There's two models and they're $50 different
on the 4G. You get webcam, no webcam, carrying case, no carrying case, and I mean
the carrying case is not that big of a deal. Yeah, whatever. So they also have the 8G
and the 2G. The 2 4G's are 399 and 349. The 8G is 499 and the 2G is 299. And then
what these G's are alluding to is the amount of solid-state disk drive or the
only hard drive that it has, space that has available. So that's not very much
when it comes to the size of drives out there today. But it's enough. They're solid-state
aren't they? Exactly. And the great thing, there's one thing that everybody knows
that solid-state is ultra-fast and low power. That's a lot of what the hype is
about these things right now. But the thing that isn't really out there and isn't very
well talked about is its durability. Like the EEPC is a tiny little laptop. But the
great thing about it is that there are no moving parts. There's no optical drive,
which is downfall in some aspects, but an up or a positive in others. It has, like
I said, no optical drive. So what you're looking at is not a single moving part on this thing.
That's great because if you're a road warrior, you're looking at
Jocelyn's thing around in your backpack for days, like 20 days out of the month.
Oh, right, right. You go through laptops like gravy.
One of the recent movies that I saw featured a kid running around in all kinds of
actions. He probably looked like he had something like the EEPC. But I was
also kind of reminded about it from I think it was the $100 laptop project.
Oh, the OMPC one laptop per child, OLPC one laptop per child.
Oh, right. Right. Yeah. I guess I was supposed to be ultra durable too.
Right. It's supposed to survive Africa.
Right. Right.
And the 4G. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Well, it was just one of my concerns about the solid state drive is how easy it is for
data to get corrupted on a solid state drive.
You know, I don't know. I'll be honest. I don't know if that's an issue at all.
Is that would there be a difference in the in the corruption ratio or how have
you want to speak of it between solid state disc and regular hard disk?
I mean, it doesn't really determine. It's not really determined on the head.
What is it? Is it determined by the operating system, correct?
I wouldn't be sure if it was a file system.
No, it was just a rumor or something that I heard, but I'm not too positive on it.
Okay. Well, after the show, I'll look into it and we'll include in the show notes.
Let me write that down real quick.
All right. So also today we'll be talking about Backtrack 3 Beta.
And we talked a little bit before the show.
You said that you tried Backtrack 2 quite extensively, but not had the chance for
for Backtrack 3 yet.
Yeah. I just haven't. I just haven't. I'll be. So yeah, I guess.
So they released the beta and it is beta in two forms in the USB form and in ISO form, like always.
The USB form is pretty cool. What you can do with it is plug in any USB stick that's a gig or larger into
your Windows XP or Linux distro and it doesn't have to be XP, any Windows distro.
And you run this BAT file or the shell script depending on if you're running Linux.
And it'll install the Master Boot record. It'll install Backtrack.
Well, it really doesn't install. It just edits the Master Boot record of the USB stick and has those two folders
that are pushed or copied onto the USB stick.
And that's it. And you run, and you boot to it and it works fantastically.
Wow, that sounds pretty easy. You have to specify the drive letter in the boot file or...
Whenever you run the script, it'll ask you for it. But normally it's just...
What it'll default to is where it's being run from. So if you copy the two folders over first and then run it,
it'll default to the USB stick that you currently have in. So you won't have to figure out what drive or HDHDCs, SDA, whatever it is.
It pretty much does it all for you then.
Yeah, it's pretty dubbing proof. I'm really happy with how it turned out and what they did with it.
So how this all ties in with the EEPC is...
The EEPC has a solid state risk, but it also has an SD card slot.
And this SD card slot is SDHC, so you can put high capacity SD cards in there and run operating systems off of the SD card
because they can boot directly to the SD card. So on my EEPC, and I have the 4G, the Galaxy, the Black 4G with the webcam, like everybody else.
And I boot Backtrack 3 beta off of the SD card. I have XP on the 4G solid state just for testing because I am part of the...
And I guess I have to get the plugs in now. But EEHackers.com group, and I'm doing some reviews and some testing out on this thing.
But the cool thing is that Backtrack 3, I got word that they delayed the release of beta for one specific reason.
And that was for the compatibility with the EEEPC. So they designed at the end stages of Backtrack 3 beta so that they designed Backtrack so that it would work with the EEEPC.
And it really does. It works flawlessly. The resolution hits it perfect. And it's an odd resolution. It's 800 by 480 on the 7-inch screen.
And it just comes up perfectly. The only thing I don't like about the distro at an in its current state is that it automatically connects to an access point that's open no matter what it's called.
So it's good and bad in some cases where it will find an access point and get you internet access. So some people might like it. But I don't like to be connecting myself to everything as soon as I turn on my PC.
There's no setting or anything to change that right now. Well, the USB version doesn't have a static, it has a static point of reference for settings. So whenever you, every time you boot, it's not different. It's not how you saved it the last time.
It's Backtrack normal. It's like booting the live CD. So they're working on the installation portion now. I tried it and it didn't work so well for me.
So that's partially why they're in beta. You know, you got to test things out. Make sure they work.
That's a whole bunch of data to get all that stuff worked out. Right.
So a couple of other cool things about the EPCs, other than instability, its battery life is amazing. It's rated to have a, let me see, let me pull up the stats real quick.
It's rated to have a 3.5 hour battery life where it really is so much more. I had it going for probably five plus hours. And all I was doing was surfing the web. I wasn't pushing it hard.
And it did amazing. It had like 20% battery life left when I turned this thing off. It was crazy.
Well, I heard it was only going to have like two hours or is that like a different model.
The 4G surf, the lower non webcam version and the 2G surf, that's at 399.
Suppose we have a 2.8 hour battery life. I don't know why. And that's for an electrician to kind of explain.
But battery must be stronger, bigger, better in the 4G galaxies and above. Can't tell you I have no idea why.
Like you know, with a $50 difference, why go with the cheaper crappier lawn?
Yeah, quite literally. I guess cost. I really don't, I don't see why you'd want it.
I mean, some of the downfalls is one, the RAM also, supposedly according to EEuser.com's wiki and they got a great wiki.
It says that the RAM slot on the 4G surf and the 2G surf looks like it's soldered on so you can't change it.
So it's 512, no matter what you got. Whereas my 4G galaxy, I instantly upgraded it from 512 to get 2 gigs.
Yeah, definitely. But that's amazing that your battery power still lasts that long, even with that much of an increase.
Yeah, I have no idea, like I said, I have no idea how it does so well, but it does.
Well, it might have something to do with the fall and sleep drive thing too.
Yeah. I remember when I first heard about it, it was only supposed to be like 250 bucks or something like that.
Yeah. Well, the RAM's so much into this thing that 400 bucks is a steal for what it can do.
It really is. It has 3 USB ports, it has a VGA out, so technically you could have this thing closed, have an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse and just use it as a desktop PC that runs.
The only bad part is it's a 900 MHz Seller on M, ULV.
But it doesn't run like a 900 MHz machine. I had a 900 MHz tablet. It's old piece of crap tablet at work.
And this thing flies faster than it. I mean, tons faster.
Oh, yeah. But the, the, the extra USB slots, because anybody tried running the OS off of like an external drive.
Yes. The way I installed Backtrack on to the SD card, since I didn't, it comes with Xandros, which is a fully functional Linux distro as soon as you.
Get it out of easy mode or whatever it's called. They have an advanced mode that it's, that there's plenty of wiki articles or, or, or tutorials on how to get it out of.
But I wanted to put XP on there so I could use it for war. Other means, the various means.
So, what was I saying? I just lost my train of thought. So I got XP on the, on the solid status.
But before I did, I had no other way of getting Backtrack on my SD card because I didn't have a high capacity slot anywhere.
I didn't have one just lying around that I could plug into a computer or anything.
Oh, right.
So what I did was I installed Backtrack 3 Beta on my USB stick, my one gig USB stick, plugged it in, booted to it, then had the SD card slot plugged in there.
Copy all the files over, ran the USB, the shell script this time because it works within Linux.
Run the shell script this time and it installed to the SD card just fine. It runs perfectly.
Oh, that's good.
So how does it feel there?
XP runs all right. The default install of XP cuts close because it's a two gig install and it has in it defaults to having two hundred percent of the paging file of your RAM.
So I had two gigs of RAM so it took up all four gigs of my of my solid state disk which made it boot like dog slow.
I'm talking just freaking slow.
And all I did was set the paging file just no paging file because I didn't really need it on this PC with two gigs of RAM in there.
I'm not going to be running wow and freaking Thunderbird and Firefox all at the same time taking up all that RAM.
So I don't really need a paging file.
Once I did that it freed up the two gigs. I had two gigs of extra space. I also had the extra space on the SD card because installing Backtrack on the SD card didn't reformat it.
I had it in Fat 32. It stayed in Fat 32. I can still boot to it in Fat 32.
So I used that extra space that I had from the seven gigs left from the SD card as extra space on XP.
So I threw Firefox portable on there. I threw a couple other programs on there.
And now I have fully functional XP installed with Backtrack at my fingertips.
And literally to take words out of the mouth of one of my buddies I used the Escape Key which is change boot preferences as my boot loader.
If I want Backtrack I go down to the SD card. If I want freaking XP I just leave it going.
So I don't really need to grow anymore.
That's pretty cool. What applications did you use in Backtrack? Did you do any hard-core testing at all?
Yeah and thanks for the segue actually. I was trying to get it over to it.
There are so many absolutely crazy amount of applications in Backtrack 3 now.
A couple of them that I'd like to touch on, particularly is Multigo.
If you watch Hack 5 or are adamant with the news Multigo is evolution.
And I did an episode on Hack 5 about evolution.
And evolution for some reason had to change their name and called Patebra, the company who made evolution, changed it to Multigo.
And what Multigo is is basically a information gathering tool that correlates data.
So you search a user name and it takes all these transforms which are basically API calls to different websites and collects everything about that email address or a username or whatever you decide to put into Multigo.
So then you can hop off of that. Yes, it's very powerful. It's amazing that they put it into Backtrack 3.
Also, the only downfall is Multigo really needs a lot of desktop real estate.
You really need to have that space and running it on the EPC is not as great.
But you get that external resolution.
Yeah, you just get that external video card or the external monitor and you're all set.
A couple of the other ones I wanted to point out was FastTrack and in Guma.
I don't know how to pronounce in Guma correctly, so I apologize if I'm doing it wrong.
FastTrack. When I first tried out FastTrack I was actually looking for Metasploit framework 3.
I accidentally went down to FastTrack and what it did was opened up a terminal.
In this terminal I gave you a couple of options.
FastTrack updates, external hacking and internal hacking.
So I got instantly, instantly interested in what this actually does.
So, in FastTrack updates, it's amazing what this thing does.
And all it is, it has to be some kind of proscript.
I'm not sure, or Python script or proscript or some kind of script.
But it does some automated things that you wouldn't find in anything that costs less than 25 grand core impact.
So, it updates Metasploit 3, it updates AircrackNG, it updates Kismet, it updates Millworm, it installs SlapGetGet, which is basically AppGet for Backtrack.
So that's just one of the update features.
When you go into external or internal hacking, you're looking at something called Metasploit AutoPone.
And what Metasploit AutoPone is, it correlates and map with Metasploit and uses those together.
If you have internal IDS, I'd recommend not ever trying this out because you'll pop on every single thing possible.
And it's very loud.
But it scans the network, whatever you point it at, it can be a single IP or network.
And it uses EndMap to scan it, takes those XML outputs from EndMap, pushes it into Metasploit as data.
Scans those boxes and those services, particularly for the exploits that are available for those services.
It then opens a session so that you have a remote shell into them.
Now, you run this on a whole network, it's going to take a while.
But the cool thing is, it'll open those sessions and keep them open.
And while it's doing the scan...
Did you have a chance to test it on like a gigabit network?
See, the EEPC doesn't have a gigabit ethernet port.
I have not tried it on a laptop or PC that has a gigabit, but that is a point to make.
I'll try that out.
So while it's still scanning, and if there's a session that gets opened, you can connect to that session while the scan continues on.
Tell me that isn't cool.
That is really cool, but I know a lot of workplaces, like now, what I've seen lately,
a lot of workplaces have Wi-Fi set up.
So you must have had a chance to test out the Wi-Fi gigabit network.
Instantly, that's the first thing anybody does whenever there's a new backtrack release.
You got a crack wet.
Of course.
So the first thing I did was I did some war driving crack web on a 64-bit key, which was rather simple and fast.
And you know, just got my feet wet with it.
But it works wonderfully. The EPC has an atheros-based card, which does injection perfectly.
And it's an all-inclusive hacking box, really.
And you can take it around in a case that does not look like a laptop case.
You can take it around in a purse if you wanted to.
Well, if you surround that with binder.
You can take it around in a binder and be having aircrack just have at it, really.
If you write, I don't know if a fast track, let me look real quick, has an aircrack automatic aircrack.
Let's see.
Expectation not upon port scanning.
No, it doesn't have it.
I'm sure you could write a script that would find, well, Y-Crawl does it.
You could run Y-Crawl during the whole thing.
Y-Crawl will automatically crack web.
I'm pretty sure it's around that three-bit.
Yep, and Y-Crawl is in there, and fully functional, and backtrack three beta.
Wow. So the data is a backtrack on every month.
You talked about how the already created all the hardware works perfectly,
and everything works nicely with it. That's awesome.
Yeah, I am amazed at just how well they made backtrack three work on.
Not only the EPC, I have some other hardware that it works well on as well.
Some old hardware that backtrack two didn't work on.
I'm sitting on an HP civilian DV9000.
Oh, yeah, those DVs are pain in the ass.
Yeah, getting the Wi-Fi card to work, and it was a really pain in the ass to try to figure out.
Well, you got to try out backtrack three, see if it works out.
Oh, totally.
Alright, we're coming up on 27 minutes.
So I'm going to wrap this up real quick.
You got any questions about the EPC, or FastTrack, or Backtrack three?
You can email me at www.muvicsatHack5.org, www.jd.muvicsatgmail.com, either or.
You can also find me at room3602.com.
Where can they find you?
I'm usually hanging out at the EIC and VIN rev, and that's pretty much it.
Alright, well, this is Fred Edtracks.
Fred Edtracks, and this is Muvics signing out.
Thanks for tuning in to Hacker Public Radio.
You guys have a nice night.
See you next time.

415
hpr_transcripts/hpr0009.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,415 @@
Episode: 9
Title: HPR0009: This old Hack 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0009/hpr0009.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:16:40
---
.
Welcome to another exciting edition of this old hack.
This is Foxfire and you'll be listening to this old hack part 4.
We skipped number 3 and that was the dumpster diving special.
Now we're on episode 4 and let's see, first I know there's been some listener feedback
concerning the lack of commentary in the show.
I guess I'm supposed to explain how all this is supposed to work.
Alright, this is Foxfire and I'm killing in for Adam.
Welcome to episode 4 of this old hack.
We're going to consider dumpster diving episode number 3 so we don't have to go back and edit the third part of the desktop hacking series.
If you're not familiar with that series, it was started on twat tech last year sometime.
This is the boring part of the show.
According to listener feedback, we've not spent enough time actually explaining what is going on.
Instead, just jumping into y'all holding my beer, I'm going to play with some power tools.
We'll take a minute to explain this show to you.
Current events, stair wood use, performance enhancing drugs.
It used to be a day-bruth played baseball.
The only performance enhancing drugs they had were hookers, booze, and cigars.
So tonight in a memory of the old tradition, I've got beer and cigarettes.
My home, it's enhancing drugs for the evening.
Obviously, this show was pre-recorded.
As a matter of fact, it's January, and the show was recorded back in, I don't know, fucking July.
Sometime in the back of the summertime, it was like 105 degrees outside, and well, it was pretty fucking hot.
Today it was actually in the 70s, and it's the first week of January, so it's kind of interesting.
What does this have to do with hacking?
Well, there's a switch involved, hackers like switches.
I know you guys like switches.
Otherwise, it comes down to the fact that everything's like a system.
You got your electrical system, you got your electronics and your computers.
You got mechanical systems, like hogs, gears, wheels, internal combustion engines, that kind of thing.
Mechanical systems, electro-mechanical systems.
In my opinion, hacking is not just a computer, and what you can do with it, or what you can do to it.
It's also any kind of system, like social engineering, you're hacking people.
So, what this has to do with hacking, it's analyzing and fixing a system.
That's about it, really, and it's something I did, and I have recorded it because, well, what the fuck, why not?
Back at this show being pre-recorded, and performance enhancing drugs that I'm taking tonight,
we'll plan on recording a second part to this show.
I'm going to work on a little project here, and it'll be the closing section of the this old hack podcast.
Where I will play with boat torches while drinking beer.
Y'all hold them up here, listen to this.
Today, we're taking a break from the desk installation project.
Still a little work outside with the well.
Most of you people live in the city, and you've never had to work with the well before.
It's not like what you see in the movies.
There's not a giant hole in the ground, and I don't want the whole buckets of water up to the surface with the rope.
Today, the diameter of the hole is, let's say, about six inches, but actually I can't see the whole lot.
I can see as the top of the pump enclosure, but it's about six inches around, and there's some PVC pipe coming up.
There's a motor.
It's down inside the hole there, and there's a long hose that runs down.
However, many hundreds of feet, they had to drill down to the water table there.
So, there's a small hole, but like I said, there's a pump, and it comes.
The process normally runs it to a pressure tank, and then there's a pressure switch.
Now, what happens is the switch senses the pressure in the line, and if the pressure gets below a certain point, it causes the pump to run.
So, this way, when you turn on the faucet in the house, the pressure tank keeps the pressure up until the pump starts running.
And then the pump kicks on, and it runs until you turn the faucet off, and then it will shut off once the pressure in the tank has reached the appropriate level.
And last year, about this time, I redid all of the plumbing inside of the well house, where I've got the pipes that run to the underground pipe from the pressure tank,
and the pipe that runs to the water hose, and the spiket for the water hose, and the pipes that run from the pump to the pressure tank.
For pretty much everything there was.
Well, recently, the fitting that goes to the, so there's like an elbow that comes up out of the ground, makes a 90 degree angle, goes on for about six inches, and then makes another 90 degree angle back down.
And that, where it goes back down, runs into the actual pipe that goes to the pressure tank.
Well, the fitting, not the pipe itself, but the actual fitting, recently, ruptured to where it was spraying water everywhere in the well house here.
So, I took a piece of thick saddle leather, and it's a vice-cribs, and made up kind of a clamp tarniquet kind of deal to keep it from spraying, because it makes the lack of pressure makes the pump run.
Well, with it dripping instead of spraying, it maintains the pressure and doesn't waste a lot of water, and it wasn't a big deal.
Well, recently the drip got worse, and there was probably about an inch of water in the bottom of the well house today, and my wife happened to notice it, and I was going to work on it anyway, so it was a good thing that she got me out of bed to work on it.
What I've already done is I have broken the nipple off of the pipe going from the pump, and because it's glued in with plumbers glue, and there's no way I could, it's not threaded, it's all plastic.
So, I had to break the nipple off, it goes to the black roll pipe, black roll pipe is flexible, black pipe, as opposed to the stiffer colored PVC that I've got to work with today.
So, right now I'm just making sure that I know what I need, I've got a sample elbow, so I pretty much know what size of fitting I'm going to need.
So, right now I'm getting ready to drive to town, and go to the supply store, and pick up the parts that I need.
And it's only about, you know, 96, 98 degrees outside today, it's not as bad as it was a couple weeks ago when it was 105 degrees, not including the heat and disease, the heat index, and so I'm getting ready to go to town.
So, that's all the project that I'm listening to, we're participating.
Paul.com here, and I'm on the iPod, and I will have some vacation last week.
Listen to the show, and I will happen to the security industry back when I get to beat down the car store.
Ready?
You want to go out and drive to town now?
No, I'm not.
It's a hard drive.
Is that?
I want to go out and drive.
Probably about 45 people at 70, 45, I'm not sure.
It gets a little high sometimes.
It doesn't act right, just sometimes it doesn't shut off, but I can do it.
I can do it as well.
Yeah, I can do it as well.
You know, at least 45 people are driving.
That's what the switches are saying.
45 people are driving.
45 people are driving here.
24 people are driving here.
45 people are driving here.
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Yeah, I don't know how to put together.
What's your problem?
I think I'm going to have to go to the party.
I've got a white PDC in the house.
I don't know if I can bring this piece off.
Bring it up and try it on my side.
What else can we do?
I don't know.
You're worthless.
Is it in the equipment or is it in the PDC pipe?
It goes from the door to the elbow.
Then it goes down to a piece.
It's in here and it goes back up to a piece.
It's actually the right door.
Nice.
And then, if it goes to something like that.
Just, uh, wind what do you do?
Just gotta build a base here.
You're ready to keep your seat fit.
If anyone has had something running,
and a piece of wind up to the other one goes up
to a piece in here.
It goes up to a piece.
1 liters of 10 size up the door.
And, you know, to be safe.
I gotta take something to do here.
Yeah.
You're a pretty missed, because whatever we got with it was worth it.
It's still got a bit inside, but it's not that I have it.
You have to get out too.
That's going to be bad.
Got it rough, because there's no way out there.
Get that to stay in there.
It's not the first.
I know it went well to get something done not doing anything well.
You don't know.
You can't say I have 20 steps left because of you.
Keep going, don't worry about what I've been doing.
We have an hour and hour and a half today.
That's on the Escort Tire.
I've got a couple of categories to get stuffed together.
Maybe you may spend this a lot of gold,
You can see for the pressure back, the shoulders, the ultimate, for the pressure, you've got to pay me, say, yeah, but you can see it okay now.
Take it out of there, I can see you guys later, I don't have to do it.
Okay, as you just heard, that was a complete failure.
Spend the last 15 minutes in the supply store here and nothing.
So now I've got to go pick up my, uh, all my dad's truck.
So I'm going to do that. I just noticed I've got a, well, I noticed earlier that there was a spider.
Made a web in my pads and just see it in my car overnight.
And, uh, you know, I figured 70, 75 miles an hour would have, uh, stepped his little ass right at the window.
But, you know, that spider web's pretty, um, pretty tough stuff and he's still kicking it over here in there.
And the pads and your seat, I had to fuck them up a little bit because he was put web over to the iPod there.
I went to grab the iPod and kind of plucked everything up for him.
But, anyway, that's it for now. I guess I'm going to get the truck.
So, 115 and I've got, you know, no water at the house.
And I've got a few hours before I have to get ready for my job.
So, um, and it's in a good 45 minute drive to and from the auto park store.
And I bought a bunch to open to the, uh, nearest other supply stores.
So, that's an hour and a half drive, um, which we put me back at the house at quarter to three.
So, I think I have to leave it for work before I sew it.
And I get this done and I have to get it done.
Yeah, you heard it coming out.
What do I do for you?
Well, you get a lot of things going on here and there and there.
Okay, you have to do one that.
Straighter is it an elbow or?
Yeah, but it's a straight piece of bread.
But like this?
That's as you've got.
Yeah.
What did this break?
Actually, it broke off in something that was actually two things.
There's one more thing like a hex down.
That's a little bit here.
What is that?
There's white PVC elbow.
What you'll be here.
Yeah, this is what's coming off of the, um, this is what's coming off the well.
So, I need something that's moving around like this.
It's going to fit in here.
I'm also going to lift this down to that side.
Okay.
Now, here's this bit here.
Now I need something that's going to, I can glue this in.
Yeah, I need something I can glue in here that's going to be the...
I don't have a car going though, I don't think.
I think we're going to have to glue something in there.
Because this will screw on too.
No, that's kind of...
No, just a little bit like that.
What we don't have to do is, uh...
This is going to be kind of complicated.
Because we use it two different types of...
Well, the one that was on there was kind of a nylon feel.
It was white and nylon.
Yeah.
It's always there.
But what do you got in here?
That's just a couple of different things.
It's like a white nylon feel.
Yeah, like something like that.
It's going to be like screwing...
But now that she mentioned it, there's a piece of this...
Um, great pipe that's smooth as we can glue that in.
Maybe she's here something for her, right?
I didn't see that.
But I don't see any of that.
That's not a car.
Alright, this is nylon.
It's the same size.
It looks like it's robbed.
And the other two are...
This is really into that.
Sure will.
This is he is.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Fantastic.
Alright, so this should be the last segment of this episode of this old hack.
What you've missed off the air was me cutting the old elbow off of the...
previous...
cutting the previous elbow off of the pipe and trimming down the existing black roll pipe.
And now...
And I used a device called the pipe cutter, which is...
It's like a demented C-clamp.
It clamps on.
The same method as a C-clamp.
Only it's got a roller.
It's got two rollers and a cutting disc.
And you apply pressure.
C-clamp fashion.
And the rollers...
I help it keep a track around the edge.
While the cutting disc, of course, cuts into the plastic pipe there.
And I think it's possible to use it on metal pipe.
I don't know.
I've not tried that yet.
And now I'm just tightening up this little clamp on the PVC there on the roll pipe.
And that should be it now.
I had to get parts of the part at the hardware store and I got some glue.
I think you guys heard all that.
And...
So...
The part you missed was the...
Glueing, which we glued it to.
You apply liberally...
The purple stuff, which is the cleaner primer for 15 seconds.
And then...
And a moment later, you apply the cement and stick it all together.
And...
I'll update on whether or not this is successful.
It's supposed to sit for 24 to 48 hours.
But...
We really can't go with no water for that long.
So we're going to try to do it in 12 hours since it's real hot and see what happens.
At least if it does mess up on what I need to get...
What I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to make a didgeridoo.
First I've got to go find the stuff to make the didgeridoo.
So...
Dark out.
I've got one of those flashlights that you have to shake up to make work.
And I can just turn it on before I go walking around.
Instead of shaking it and walking around in the dark.
But I actually don't know how well this is going to work because...
I've seen it done with campfires.
I have never...
I've seen it done with campfires in...
I've seen it done with...
Torches or...
But I have never used a torch.
And I've never made a didgeridoo before, but...
There's the first time for everything and what's the worst that could happen?
I could blow some shit up.
Something you know.
Okay, I've got my torch here and a bottle of gas.
Let's see.
It's dark, so of course.
Let's see what the label says.
Oh, the label fell off.
So actually, it sounds like there's stuff in there.
So I actually don't know.
It's some kind of torch compound that people normally use for...
soldering joints on pipes.
And such.
Speaking of pipes, I've got my pipe cutter here,
which probably would have been faster for me just to grab it.
That's awesome.
I don't really care if it's a flush cutter nut.
All I want is...
I'm fucking chunk of pipe.
I have a hexal handy.
And now I know I saw some pipes over here.
And the woods, earlier than day, that was going to be perfect.
At least I thought it was going to be perfect.
And...
A, I need a better light.
My mag light died.
And I'm waiting until I can afford to get one of those LED mag lights.
Now my dog thinks I'm going to attack her.
I'm going to get attacked here.
And my own dog, obviously.
Not a good thing.
It's great, you guys.
All right.
Well, this will cut me off a good chunk of this stuff.
Yeah, that was a lot quicker than using the pipe cutter.
Which is great for metal pipe because you can't just saw right through metal pipe.
Now, against my better judgment, I'm going to smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol,
and play with a blowtorch.
And a large piece of glass to cover and check the insides.
I'm telling you what, I'm going to live in inside of it.
I'm going to take in some kind of gillian space, creatures inside of the house.
I can't see through the goddamn thing.
Okay, well, and what?
It'd better just be okay.
I'm going to get all my shit together here.
Here it is.
Got my stuff together.
The first thing I want to do is crack a beer.
Take a shot.
And see if I can't refine my lighter.
And I'm going to go test to see if I can even make this blowtorch machine.
I don't know if there's any kind of safety precautions.
I'm supposed to be taken here.
I'll never handle this stuff before.
I'm going to empty bottle there.
I'm just going to chuck that out the back door.
I've got what could possibly be.
A full bottle of gas here.
And I'm going to attempt to attach it.
Here, let's see.
Well, it does in fact have gas in it.
Now, I'm going to turn it into gas on and attempt to light it with a lighter and see what happens.
Okay, well, I have no torch action.
Good, actually.
Now that's going to be established.
I'm going to go take my oversized length of roll pipe, which roll pipe is.
I don't think I explained it in the show.
Roll pipe is like black PVC tubing that obviously comes on a roll instead of in lengths.
So I'm going to turn the shower on here because it's dark.
I don't know if I'm working out in the yard.
And I'm just going to light the mud off of this piece of pipe.
I'm just going to sit him out in the ground, on the ground, for diagnosed how long.
There was some rush.
There was some water through it.
Make sure there's no clearers living inside.
Before I go doing anything weird to it because I'm going to be putting my metal on one end of it.
And I'm going to be putting a torch torch to the other end of it.
And now I'm not smoking the world's second biggest bomb here.
But that's part of the process.
Finding these are good.
And so in order to make it custom, make it sound right.
I will definitely not want some kind of larger magnets crawling up my throat.
Well, welcome this day.
If I was a good drunk, I'd have 40 bottle sitting around somewhere.
And I would use a 40 bottle for my next step.
But I don't have any 40 sitting around here.
So I'm going to try to use this lemon juice bottle.
Now what I'm going to do with the lemon juice bottle is pick an end of the tube.
This would actually sound better if I had a bigger piece of larger diameter piece of tubing.
But since I don't, then I'm not just working with what I've got.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to heat one end of the pipe with the blow torch.
And I'm going to slide it over the top of the bottle and create a bell shaped end to make the sound better.
So lighting up the torch line here.
Okay, here we go.
I'm doing kind of spinning the pipe around, heating it as I go.
I'm going to try not to catch it on fire.
Oh, shit.
Oh, shit.
Come to happen.
Oh, god damn it.
Well, two mistakes so far.
First mistake is I was twisting the tube counterclockwise and I managed to unscrew the cat to the lemon juice.
And now it is firmly lodged inside the tube.
I'll try to extract the cap.
Reattach it in from that one I will be turning the tube clockwise.
Second mistake was overheating the plastic.
And setting it on fire and pushing too hard too fast.
If I was a good drunk I'd have 40 bottle sitting around somewhere and I would use a 40 bottle for my next step.
But I don't have any 40 sitting around here.
So I'm going to try to use this lemon juice bottle.
Now what I'm going to do with the lemon juice bottle is pick an end of the tube.
This would actually sound better if I had a bigger piece of larger diameter piece of tubing.
But since I don't then I'm going to just work with what I've got.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to heat one end of the pipe with the blow torch.
And I'm going to slide it over the top of the bottle and create a bell shaped end to make the sound better.
So I'm lighting up the torch line here.
Okay here we go.
I'm going to kind of spinning the pipe around, heating it as I go.
Try not to catch it on fire.
Oh shit.
Oh my god.
Come to happen.
Oh god damn it.
Oh god damn it.
Well two mistakes so far.
First mistake is I was twisting the tube counterclockwise and I managed to unscrew the cat to the lemon juice.
And now it is firmly lodged inside the tube.
I'll try to extract the cap.
Reattach it in for now and I will be turning the tube clockwise.
Second mistake was by overheating the plastic and setting it on fire.
And pushing too hard too fast.
That is the learning experience so far.
I'm going to try working with the other end now since I just cut the first end that I was working with.
I'll just cut it off and start over.
That's where I cut it off an extra long piece.
Since I've never done this before then I will see if it works.
Oh and the knob is working off of the bottle.
Okay the bottle has come on fire and I'm throwing it outside because something just doesn't seem safe about that.
I think this concludes the homemade didgeridoo portion of this old hack.
I will be throwing away the bottle of lemon juice because I think it has past its expiration date.
I will be throwing the piece of rope out of the back door until I can get a new torch nozzle that I did not just kind of find.
Luckily I did not blow my testicles off and y'all hold my beer and watch this.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HBR is sponsored by Hero.net so head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-E-C for all those in the world.
Thank you for watching.

234
hpr_transcripts/hpr0010.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,234 @@
Episode: 10
Title: HPR0010: The Linux Boot Process Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0010/hpr0010.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:16:11
---
Music
Music
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio, my name is Dan Washgo, and today I am going to begin
a series of shows, of episodes that discuss the Linux boot and initialization process.
Now, I can't recall whether I did a similar show focusing on the differences between System
5 and VSD style boot processes under Linux for today with a techie, but I figure what
I would like to do is to give an overview of the Linux boot process from start to finish
and then go back and detail significant sections of the boot process in future episodes, including
and not limited to how the device file system gets initialized.
Looking at technology such as how the hardware abstraction layer Damon and UDev and hotplugging
how that all works and different portions of how services are configured and actually
started on the Linux style system.
So today what I am going to do is just do a cursory high level view of the Linux boot
process and all the way up until you get to the command prompt.
Now what's interesting about the different distributions of Linux by and large which
you are going to find, they are all the same, Linux is pretty much Linux, but when you
are looking at the different distributions, primary differences occur quite frankly in
the boot process and how the system is configured and whether it is System 5 or VSD style
system and the actual boot process, in which we will detail in a few minutes here, there
are subtle differences between Debian style systems, Red Hat based systems and of course
Slackware and Arch Linux and other different distributions.
Beyond the boot process and the configuration files, some of the other differences would
be what patches they apply to the kernel.
For the most part, distributions generally support the same hardware although commercial
distributions may extend hardware support for certain binary only drive hardware components.
Sussan may include different patches or stuff to their kernel than a Red Hat for support
for different operating systems.
By and large you could still get all those patches if you wanted to collect them yourself
and apply them from the different manufacturers, hardware, driver websites or from the kernel
enhancements at kernel.org, different kernels out there and pull all those together.
It's a little bit of a task but it can have its benefits and you get to actually learn
what you're doing or what's going on inside your system.
Aside from that, patching certain applications is a possibility but generally there isn't
that much of a difference between distributions.
So what we're going to do is just start at the beginning when you turn on your computer.
The first thing that the system does is does a hardware check and runs through post and
the BIOS initializes the boot device.
Unlike some other operating systems, Linux primarily uses the BIOS to initiate the boot
loader process and then that's it.
It does not probe the BIOS to detect hardware or anything else but just to initialize the
boot loader off the preferred boot device.
Now let's just assume we're going to be booting off of a hard disk here.
There are other types of boot devices, flash drives, CDE or DVDs that you can boot from
but we're going to focus primarily on booting from a hard drive, be it scouser or ID, whatever.
What it does is it looks for an initialization of boot loader program and the two main programs
you're going to find on Linux are LILO and it's LILO and GRUB, GRUB.
Now LILO was the old standard that was used way back in the day.
It's one of the first ones I cut my teeth on and GRUB has been its predecessor not so much
by the same group but has essentially replaced LILO as the preferred boot loader of choice
for most distributions.
Now there's a third way to boot Linux and that's out of a Windows or DAW session using
the LoadLin which will initialize the boot loader but we're not going to cover that right
now.
We're just going to look at probably the primary difference between LILO and GRUB is that
GRUB allows for a dynamic loading or configuration on the fly at the boot process.
Both of them present you with a menu of options or images, kernel images that you have or other
operating systems that are available that have been configured to boot from but GRUB takes
in one step further which allows you to actually specify through an edit option a kernel
that might not be present or an operating system that might not be in the actual menu file
provided you know the parameters to get that thing running.
LILO on the other hand the only thing you could actually do is pass a boot time option
parameter like Linux single to the image sets you're going to be booting.
The benefit of using LILO as opposed to or actually using GRUB as opposed to LILO is
that on some distributions that don't like leave it up to you to initialize the boot loading
process if you're using LILO most modern distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, when you upgrade
the kernel or something will make sure that everything is ready to go but you take a system
like Slackware or Arch Linux which requires more hands on you install a new kernel and
you run a LILO you actually have to initialize LILO if you don't do that and you don't have
a default kernel or anything you get kind of hose there you can't boot your system as
you can't find a kernel.
Now GRUB on the other hand like I said you can dynamically load that kernel put that information
in there right from the get go and you're good to go it'll allow you to boot the kernel
that's on the system.
So GRUB is definitely a lot more flexible and in addition to the enhanced booting process
there you are able to provide this similar parameters to the boot process that you can
in LILO.
Well anyway once the boot loader initializes the kernel or kicks off the kernel it also
may or may not load what is called a ram initializing ram disk it's a virtual disk an
image that goes hand in hand with the kernel there are two kind of two kernels that you
can run on a Linux system there's a monolithic and a modular or a modular kernel now monolithic
kernel has everything compiled into it that you would absolutely need and when you are providing
a distribution for a myriad number of systems you're not going to go with a monolithic
kernel you're going to go with a modular kernel which makes more sense what a modular
kernel does is provide just enough in the kernel to get things going and then everything
else is loaded in via modules.
Now a modular kernel has one disadvantage that if you don't compile in the necessary hardware
support for your system or it's not compiled in it makes it difficult to boot your system
up using that modular kernel that's pretty slim down therefore they use what's called
an initializing ram disk and that provides a virtual image so to speak of modules that
pretty much cover the majority of systems out there which then does not require the
need for a monolithic kernel or most hardware to be compiled into the kernel at boot
time so it's a system of getting around being able to initialize the required components
of your hardware like your file system the drivers for your disks hard disk scusy disks
whatever the necessary components to boot the system it gets you just enough to get up
and initialize your file system and load the drivers or modules that are on your distributions
or your modules directory and get you onto the process of running the rest of the machine.
Now there are some systems that don't need an initial ram disk again if you're going
to use a monolithic kernel with has everything compiled in or your own kernel you may not
have to worry about there being a missing driver or anything and you can forgo the use
of an initial ram disk initializing ram disk but by and large most distributions out there
today do do that and stick with a modular kernel the advantage of a modular kernel it's
a lot smaller and it only loads in the play exactly what you need modular wise so it takes
up a lot of space and resources in the long run so the bootloader passes off control
to the kernel and the initial ram disk gets loaded and the image actually gets mounted
virtually as the kernel boots and initializes the hardware and the file system comes up
it can unmount the initial ram disk and begin to mount the root partition read only to start
to continue loading the modules required for the rest of the system doing some hardware
program and everything to match modules with the hardware that's the kernel has found
or the scripts have found at which point then the kernel turns over control to the
espn init application unit application is executed now that's of course short for initialization
you can say and what that does is it begins the process of loading up the actual software
that you're going to interact with on the computer it starts the services that's the
beginning level right here of actually getting the rest of the tools of your operating system
running because as we know Linux is the name of the kernel and it comes with a whole suite
of tools in it which is one of them so what in it does is it uses an application or uses
a configuration file and most systems called the Etsy init tab file now here's where we
start to get a difference between red hat devian Ubuntu slackware arch Linux type distributions
at the init level by large majority of distributions red hat slackware red hats derivatives are
using the init tab file I believe some older distributions of devian devian are still using
the init tab which is a a file that you'll find in the Etsy directory that begins to describe
how this system is going to be running what init tab one of the main things it does is set the
run level of your Linux system now a run level defines what applications and what what you're going
to be running for the rest of your session there are seven run levels zero through six now zero
is halt okay stop shut down machine has a run level of zero six on the other hand is reboot okay so
you'd never want to set your init directory or your init file to set the default run level the
zero or six that would be ridiculous it would start up shut down start up shut down now run level
one is the Linux single user mode no services are started no network started it's essentially repair
mode you can get into it by calling the kernel image that you want from your boot loader and
specifying sig single after it you generally don't want to run in Linux single user mode you can
also use the tel init program to drop down in a single user mode by passing tel init and the
number one to the system it's good during an upgrade process or if you need to configure something
or stop a service that requires in that gets a little funky you can bring it down the
single user mode and you can bring it back up from single user mode to any other level like for
instance let run level two is multi user with no networking one and two generally aren't used
for anything other than troubleshooting configuration repair stuff you well once primarily used
now three is what the majority of systems used to be set for and there's some controversy I
noticed today as to what exactly is run level three run level three is a multi user with networking
okay now on slackware based systems run level three that's it multi user with with
networking the standard system you boot up into a virtual council you type start x if you want to
start the x windows subsystem and run with a graphical x system now on debian systems for instance
run level three actually starts the graphical interface using gdm kdm or xdm so they kind of
what I consider run level three is not the same run level three and debian okay run level four
is used not used by most distributions otherwise run level four is the same as run level five which is
what I was accustomed to is a multi user system running the x sub system or x session using gdm xdm
or kdm as a login window as a login manager right there that was what I considered run level five
which debian considers run level three or runs at run level three so on a slackware system run level
five will put you into your graphical login and initialize your services for running x on login
and of course we just said run level six is reboot now once the
sis in it or the initialization file is called the init tab and specifies what run level is
going to run at it then init runs the initialization scripts and here again is a difference
between slackware and other Linux systems which will actually say it's a difference between the
bs style bsd style and system five style of initialization scripts on a top level what you have
with a bsd style is you have a a bunch of scripts in a directory on slackware is the etc rc.d
directory run control dot directory in there it's a series of scripts that get run based upon
what run level that you have chosen this difference from the system five style of
initialization in that as opposed to an etc rc.d directory with a series of scripts you have an
etc init dot d directory that has a whole bunch of scripts in there for starting and stopping
certain processes now those those scripts don't get called out of the init dot d directory instead
what happens is based upon what run level you have chosen that runs or executes looks in a
directory called etc slash rc dot d slash r and the run level dot d of of whatever run level
you're running it so for instance run level three we'll look at r3 dot d now not all distributions
of here to putting it under the etc slash rc dot d slash r run level some of them just put it in
etc r2 dot d or whatever anyway what it is is you go to that run level directory and in there
is a series of sim links back to the files in the etc dot init dot d directory and they're either
preceded with an capital s or a capital k and what these do is an s starts the service whereas
k kills the service so if you're running at run level one zero or one level one or we switch to run
level six it has a bunch of kills links in there that will kill the process that's running
or and for run like run level one it might kill some processes and verify that some other ones
are started whereas in something like run level three four five you're going to see a lot more
assets for starting a lot of different processes and subsystems in there so that's primarily the
big difference there you have one primarily one directory for initialization scripts or startup
scripts in a bsd style system whereas on a system five initialization system you have a
bunch of sim links in a run level directory that actually get executed now there's some other
differences in there like for instance there's one file in particular called the sys init file
most distributions still use which is an etc can be an etc sys init is a configuration for it or
etc rcd slash rc sys init which is where you find it in the red hat system slackware is the etc
rc dot d slash rc dot s file in the rc dot d directory and arch Linux has a etc slash rc dot sys
init file now if you have an init tab and you look in there you're going to find where the system
initialization file is which calls some other basic system initializations prior to running
the run level scripts one thing I think I need to make clear about the bsd or the slackware
style of initialization is in addition to whatever run level script are if you look in a slackware
directory you're going to see a number of files in the etc dash rc dot d directory is you're
going to find a number of files in there called rc some number dot s which is the script for
and those are your run level files right there rc dot four rc dot five rc dot six if they're
available you'll find those in there for specific run levels there's some other subtle
differences but we're not going to go into those right now anyway I'm getting back to the sys
in a file now on Ubuntu and some Debian based systems or more modern Debian systems you're not
going to find a sys in a file or you're not going to find an init tab in a tab file instead you're
going to find the etc event dot d directory which essentially has the similar startup files that
we have discussed it breaks it down in the individual files in there and begins to set your run
level from there and start the necessary applications that you'll run on boot once the scripts are run
in either your bsd style or system five style of initialization all the scripts are run the
init then creates a handful of virtual councils based particularly using the mingeti program
most times you'll have six virtual councils that you can log into if you're running a
graphical session using xdm gdm you're still going to get those six virtual councils you'll find
them on one two three four five and six whereas seven will be the x system that you're currently
running and also most likely the first session the first virtual council will be where x is
actually running from in that council you won't actually be able to use the first council it'll
have some debugging information or your session information in x in some cases actually you know
what it might not be on one it might be on another one like seven or I'm sorry six or eight so
it's not necessarily but one of them is going to contain your x session debugging information if
you were to start x after you have booted your system and you'll be running what I call run
level three you log into a virtual council and start x your your information of the session that's
going on will be available in that virtual council session that you started x from and then you
will actually run x on virtual council seven it could be on a different council eight nine or ten
whatever by standard is seven for that so that's the entire Linux boot process in a nutshell
we focused a little more on what differences between system five and vst styles which is
primarily what I wanted to get through as a little more focus on that in addition to the high
level view of the boot process to recap you have your you turn your system on those posts the
BIOS passes or actually initializes the boot device and control gets handed over to the boot load
or which allows you to choose what image you want to load or what operating system from that point
control gets passed to the kernel which you typically uses an initialization ram disk to
initialize some hardware that's required for booting which may not be compiled into the kernel
and virtual drivers like your array or your file systems so that it would be able to mount
the root file system at that point and begin the rest of the loading of the modules that you have
and identifying your hardware so that it can pass off control to the init program which defines
run level you're going to run at and from there begins the process of kicking off
be it a bsd style system or system five style system the scripts to run the applications and
processes and demons that you prefer to run at that specified run level it completes that whole
initialization process by providing a number of virtual terminals that you can log into using
a mingeti program and or it set you up for graphical login using gdm kdm or xdm so that you can log
into an x session that's in a nutshell so next time we come back we're probably going to look at
another subsystem or look at one of those those processes in detail I'm not might not stick with
going from poo loaders to clearly defining the init tab stage I might just jump right into some
other subsystems not necessarily going to go into order but keep on listening and keep on
participating and have a great one bye thank you for listening to hacker public radio
hpr-sponsored by caro.net so head on over to caro.net for all your hosting needs

90
hpr_transcripts/hpr0011.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
Episode: 11
Title: HPR0011: dd_rhelp
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0011/hpr0011.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:16:44
---
.
Hello and welcome to this episode of Hack and Public Radio with your host, Operator.
This episode is going to be over DD underscore rescue and DD underscore our help,
which is a helper script for DD rescue.
And DD underscore rescue is not to be confused with DD rescue.
So here, from here on out, when I say DD rescue, I'm referring to DD underscore rescue.
So first off, what state does a drive have to be in?
You have a drive that picked up by the BIOS first off.
It needs to be at least picked up by the BIOS and that something can talk to it.
Be it hopefully, if it's an NTFS partition, windows can at least mount the drive as a readable drive
and see the partitions.
Or secondly, you can use something like F is to be able to display inside of units Linux
what the partition information is and see if you can at least pull that much off of it.
So the setup I have is IDE zero or the first IDE is the CD-ROM and second unslave
is going to be the backup drive.
And then that lead the other IDE channel open to I put the backup drive that I'm going to drive.
I'm going to actually image the bad drive and then the drive that's known good that I'm going to image two,
which is going to be the same size or larger, that's going to be the secondary.
So this will allow you to once you've actually made a good image of the drive,
you can go ahead without rebooting anything and push that image straight on to your known good drive.
Along with this, I've got the laptop to IDE and also the SATA IDE converter plugged into that same chain.
So if I need to do any of that prior, then it'll all be set up good to go.
Also, you'll want to, if you can format the drive, you're going to put the image on to something Unix Linux compatible,
EXT3 or UFS, whatever.
This will work a little bit better as far as mounting it and then we'll have to worry about closing it or cross-platform stuff.
So the drive's picked up, you've got everything set up.
And the first thing you want to notice is check FDisk or whatever partition manager you want to use.
And look and see where your partition started and where they stopped and things like that.
So this way, if you have to, you can just back up from the beginning.
You can back up the actual partitions and master boot record and all that good stuff before you start to actually touch the disk.
Next thing is, it's going to take some time.
Just depending on how bad the drive is, where the bad parts are, how often they are, how slow it is, transfer rate, how big the drive is.
160 gig drive took at right at about three days to make an image of.
And probably it's a total of four days to once restoration and putting it on the new drive.
So, easiest thing, I use a live CD called G-Parted.
It's similar to a commercial version of partition magic.
And also a USB stick with a few noted items on there about different things where boot sectors are.
Then just notes I have on the USB stick.
And also, I have the DD underscore R help, which is also in the show note.
And this is what the cast is mainly going to be about.
The helper application for DD rescue called DD underscore R help.
Like I said, I had no problems running it off of G-Parted live distribution, off of a thumb drive.
Once you've verified that you're riding to the right disk and trying to read from the right bad disk or known disk with errors on it.
You'll see the basic command line options for DD underscore R help.
Just pretty much the same thing as DD rescue, except there's a few other switches for it.
The first thing is it will automatically create a log file.
And this log file is sort of kind of hard to read at first.
But essentially, if you read the documentation and the FAQ and everything for DD underscore R help,
it'll tell you exactly what it's doing, what it's doing in the log files.
And it'll be a little bit clearer, good, you know, halfway into it.
You'll understand how it works.
Mainly, you're going to look through FDISC and see how big the partition is or disk is that you're copying.
How many blocks it has total?
From there, you'll be able to read where DD rescue is at any given time and how much it's actually copied.
If it goes from one end to the disk to the other, it will show the image will show a full size of the actual disk.
Being as that, it's skipping over parts that it kind of fails at.
It's going to display kind of a false information that's, oh, my disk is completely backed up.
No, what you want to do is read the log files and look for a line called EOS in caps.
This will tell you where DD underscore R help is at how much it's, how many blocks it's copied or at least tried to copy,
and all that good stuff.
And after a while, you'll see something inside of the log and also from the actual command line, you'll see bar.
And it'll detects representation of where it's at on the disk.
At first, basically, you'll see a bunch of dots.
And as it goes over, they'll turn it to x's.
So the dots are not parsed.
Jump points are going to be stars.
And parsed is means parts that it's already tried to go over or has gone over.
And how it works, if you go to the documentation, it starts off, hits an error, skips a little bit,
and then once it's gone through the whole disk, it goes back and picks the biggest chunk that it missed.
Starts in the middle and goes from the middle to the left to the middle to the right, meaning from the middle reverse and from the middle forward.
And I will leave some, in the show notes, I'll leave some example of the bar output.
So you'll kind of see what it looks like further down the road.
Also, there's some other things I didn't have to do, tweak any settings.
But you can do things like disable or enable DMA to make things go faster or slower.
The whole idea of DD underscore our help is to make the process faster.
And instead of sitting there, then, for on the same, you know, 500 blocks, it's going to skip over those portions and come back to it later.
So this utilizes the time that it takes to run a full DD rescue scan or DD scan or copy.
Pretty much wraps up this episode of Packer Public Radio.
Anybody has any questions about the episode or any other previous episodes?
You can contact me from the website, and I will try and help you. That's like it.
Thank you for listening to Packer Public Radio.
We are sponsored by caro.net. So head on over to caro.nc for all the hopes and needs.
Thanks for watching.

157
hpr_transcripts/hpr0012.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,157 @@
Episode: 12
Title: HPR0012: Xen
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0012/hpr0012.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:17:44
---
music
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Miro Vinci and I'll be your host today.
Previously in episodes of Today with a Techie, I discussed using VMware and virtualization
as a potential solution to different problems or to different test networks such as that
as you might need.
I believe I listed the example of a virtual cluster that I had built completely inside
of VMware.
I had a master node to slave nodes and all of the networking necessary to actually run
to actually test the cluster and it saved me bundles in terms of hardware because I only
needed one machine with one piece of software, you know, I'll be at VMware.
But this past semester, I took a class at the university, simply titled virtualization
and we spent the entire semester going through different journal articles and discussing
the technology of virtualization, a lot of the theory behind virtualization and a lot
of a lot of very interesting stuff and we concluded the semester with individual projects.
And so I hope to over the next few episodes that I have with Hacker Public Radio to explore
some of the things that we discussed in class and even potentially hopefully share my
project with you, with the community because it's a simple project, it was something that
I whipped together in the application that I'll actually be talking about here shortly and
has a potential, I feel to be a real benefit and hopefully in the coming months, I will
be able to talk about that some more coming weeks rather.
So today I wanted to discuss more and depthly of virtualization solution known as Zinn.
Now Zinn is spelled X-E-N and actually started with a professional article, a journal article
that came out in 2003 called Zinn and the Art of Virtualization, you know, and the main
authors on that were Paul Barham, Boris Dragovic and Kair Fraser and I would definitely
encourage you to go on the internet and you can go to websites like site seer at C-I-T-E-S-E-E-R.
You have to Google that or just use Google or Google Scholar to actually find this article.
It's 40 pages long and it really is an introduction, a good introduction to Zinn and how Zinn
works as a virtualization system or virtualization solution.
Some of you might be wondering what exactly is a virtualization software or virtualization
system to start with VMware as an example.
VMware will allow you to install their software onto your current operating system and then
install what they refer to as guest operating systems inside of that program.
Ultimately though what is going on is that guest operating system is installing completely
within software, installing completely within software to where it has no direct access
to any physical hardware because to the guest operating system, it has a complete set
of physical hardware which is completely being emulated by VMware.
Yes it is possible inside of say VMware workstation or VMware server to allow the guest
operating system to have access directly to pieces of hardware whether that is a CD-ROM
drive, USB hubs or USB devices, network cards, network interface devices.
You can allow that sort of access but by default and by its overall operation it is trying
to contain the guest operating system completely within emulated hardware or virtual hardware.
So now if you think about it, if you try and run just let's say a CD player application
within your guest operating system but you want to play it on the physical or you want to
play the physical CD-ROM drive, the CD player application has to send its you know system calls
and hardware calls and all that stuff through the guest operating system which gets down
to the virtual hardware which then VMware interprets those requests and then allows it
allows from that software application to take those hardware calls and hardware requests
down through the real operating system which is the operating system that lies beneath
the VMware, not above it, but beneath the VMware that allows then access to the physical
hardware.
So we've now added multiple layers that system calls and things like that have to get
through before they get to now comparing Zen to this virtualization model or virtualization
example, Zen is actually rather different.
Now for VMware Workstation and VMware Server it is a guest operating system installed
of a piece of software that was installed on top of a real operating system.
Now with Zen the guest operating system is installed onto what is referred to as a hypervisor.
Now the hypervisor is technically a piece of the Zen software that translates or handles
the system calls between the guest operating system and the hardware.
Now so this basically removes a lot of those layers between you know the software operating
system or software operating system, virtualization software, the true operating system down
to the real hardware and allows for a more direct access to the hardware.
Now even though a guest operating system has this more direct access access to hardware
is still controlled by Zen.
So just like in the VMware example if you want to allow a piece of hardware to have direct
access to a guest OS you can certainly do that and conversely if you don't want the
guest OS to have direct access or any access whatsoever to a piece of hardware you have
the ability to block that access and to deny access to that hardware or to that hardware
device.
If you were if you're following or if you get a chance to download the papers in the
virtualization figure one is a better description of you know of the Zen hypervisor and how
it fits into I guess the operating system model I don't know I don't this has a technical
term that I'm not familiar with but you'll see what's going on here.
Now to control the actual hypervisor as you'll see in this picture is and as you read in
this paper is something referred to as domain zero.
Within the Zen software guest operating systems are referred to as domains and all of all
of these things installing guest operating systems starting and stopping guest operating
systems as well as setting up hardware for guest operating systems or domains is all
controlled by domain zero and domain zero is a you know is a is a Linux is basically I mean
it it's Linux that has access to the Zen hypervisor and that allows these controls.
Okay so now we're aware of two different virtualizing solutions that are currently on the
market what's you know why would you choose one over the other well the answer comes
down to performance and performance issues as well as you know what you're going to do
with it now in terms of performance the Zen you know appears to do very very well and if
you look in in the article there's a complete section of evaluation and testing and figure
three is is a it's a graph that shows shows a benchmarks comparing native Linux so Linux
on a physical machine to what they call Zeno Linux which is their which is their Zen client
a VMware workstation but to be fair this is VMware workstation 3.2 and then user mode
Linux in all of these cases the Zeno Linux the Zen does almost as well as the native Linux
does or as the native hardware does and that's simply because it doesn't have the overhead of an
of an additional operating system operating underneath of Zen and underneath of what you know Zen
is trying to accomplish now to be fair though you can't really use this article to compare Zen
to VMware because in the article they use VMware workstation 3.2 and I don't know if it's
explained in this article or if it was in different articles that we read but you can go to and you
can go to the VMware website and you can find this in their in their in user license agreement
that you are not allowed to do benchmarking without VMware's express permission and I think in some
of their or in a recent change to their you know you know it's you you can you can do your own
benchmarks but they ask that you not publish the results and so even though they're up to like
VMware workstation 5.5 at the time this people was written VMware workstation 3.2
was the only version of VMware that VMware would license or allow them to do this benchmark on
and use the results in this article so you know so to to be fair to VMware I do want to point out
point out that difference and point out that thing but comparing Zen to native Linux so Linux
on a physical machine the numbers are incredible and that Zen performs very very well and so
they continued on with more benchmarks into let's see section 4.3 with running concurrent virtual
machines so they tested running running instances simultaneous instances of you know this benchmarking
program on you know Linux or native Linux and Zen and it's remarkable that looking in figure 4
and they're running what's called spec web 99 which was a a stress test of Apache servers or
a stress test for Apache servers and whenever there was one instance of the Apache server running
on Linux and Zen you know the native Linux did better than Zen did and it does that for the
two instances and for four instances but once we get to eight concurrent Apache servers that are
running the stress test analyzer now we get to a point where Zen actually performs better than
the native Linux does and I mean then that and that's because they're you know for each instance
of the Apache they're running it on different um different um domains and so you know so there's
not this conflicting overhead of software costs you know from from one instance to the other
azures with the native Linux or the you know the Linux on a physical machine and so Zen performs
very very well and you know if you read another pieces of literature depending on the application
that you're doing Zen runs incredibly well now again to be fair to VMware not that I by any way
I'm trying to um give plugs to VMware to encourage you to buy VMware's product or VMware products
they do have something called ESX server which is which is in in my opinion not that I've had direct
experience with it but appears to be very similar if not the same to this idea of pair of virtualization
now to completely you know reiterate that I don't want to give plugs to VMware because I mean
their products are commercial they cost and you know I am a free open source kind of guy I like
to support the open source community and Zen is actually an open source product now they do have a
apparent company or a the company the the people who created Zen you know created their own
company which was bought out by Citrix last year and so Zen does have a commercial solution
but they still have all of their source code online available for download for you know
absolutely free and I will definitely include a link in the show notes but that link is
Zen.org xen.org now you can go to ZenSource.org and that'll take you to the you know to the new
parent company Citrix but Zen.org xen.org is where you can get you can download it you can download
the user manual they have a wiki you know all sorts of that general open source communal
so that you can communicate that you can talk with others and that you can work with others
on your Zen project I'll also include a link in in a how to forge article that I use initially
when I got started with Zen and and if you just go to Zen or go to how to forge.com and you can
do a search for Zen devian it should be like the first link I used devian as my domain zero
to control my Zen and control the hypervisor it was able to install other devian domains or other
devian guest operating systems on my on my system on my Zen virtualized system I know there are
articles in the how to forge about how to install multiple versions of Linux or multiple flavors of
Linux onto our into a Zen environment including Ubuntu and Fedora core devian obviously etc so
definitely a worthwhile tool feel free also if you have any more questions you can email me directly
at MiroVinji at gmail.com that's m-i-r-o-v-e-n-g-i you can also find me in the
infinomicon channel on the free node irc server and in future episodes we'll be looking at more
virtualization technology that's come out especially some of the hardware technologies like the
vt enabled stuff I hope to discuss more theory about that about what goes into virtualization
and how some of these things like VMware like Zen work and and to potentially maybe look at
some of the more recent virtualization news which is like the VMVM escaping that many people
are working on you know looking at malware things like blue pill and just also how to really
use these technologies to your advantage and to you know what you're doing which you know gets
back to my class project that I hope to unveil at some point I hope that you've enjoyed today's
episode I'm again the MiroVinji and this has been hacker public radio thank you for listening
to hacker public radio hpr is sponsored by caro.net so head on over to caro.net for all your hosting

126
hpr_transcripts/hpr0013.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
Episode: 13
Title: HPR0013: LPI Certifications Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0013/hpr0013.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:17:47
---
.
Hello and welcome to hacker book of radio. This is episode 13 for Thursday, January the 17th.
I'm the host of today's show, my name is Ken Fallon.
This is the first and many series entitled Linux Professional Institute Certifications, LPI-C.
And in this mini series, I'm going to help provide you with some information that will help you in passing
some of the certifications provided by the LPI Institute.
According to Wikipedia, the Linux Professional Institute NC LPI is an unprofit organization
that provides vendor and dependent professional certification for Linux system administrators and programmers.
Now, the certifications themselves are available in many countries and in many languages.
And the community participates in the exam creation.
From my point of view, I think the LPI-C is well respected and recognised, at least as much as the red-add certifications
are provided by the LPI.
They have three levels of certification, the junior advanced and senior level.
And for the junior level, you need the junior level to continue on doing the rest, I believe.
I'm going to say I believe because I haven't actually done any of the certifications myself.
And the reason I'm doing this podcast series is so that it will be a way for the information in the documents to sink in.
And we will continue.
The task overview is to work at the Linux command line, provide easy maintenance tasks, to help users out,
to add users and large system backup or restore, shutdown or reboot.
Also, to install and configure a workstation, include an X and connect it to a LAN or a standard on PC,
via a modern and internet prerequisites for the junior level are passing exam 101 and 102.
I've seen some advice that you are better off preparing for exam 101 and 102 together as some of the questions switched between exams.
The documentation that we're going to be using are the IBM documentation provided on www.ibm.com,
forward slash developer works, forward slash Linux, forward slash LPI.
And while the LPI on the well LPI web pages themselves, they say while the can't recommend on the documents,
these documents seem to be well respected in the community.
Now you need to register with the with IBM in order to be able to access these PDF files.
The copyright does remain with IBM, but I believe we should be allowed to use them under the fair use provision, although I'm not a lawyer.
Software that we're going to be using is the VMware server, largely because of the VMware uses a BIOS while other VMware solutions don't.
We're going to be using CentOS and Debian net install, the CentOS 5.1 net installs at ISO,
and the Debian 40 or 1 i3.06 net installs at ISO can get them on their respective websites.
Install the VMware server and then install the VM for Debian with 256 megabramic,
like a disk, not pre-assign, not split. When you get to partitioning, select the entire disk,
create separate home user of our intent partition, so that'll be an option.
So that'll be interesting when we're doing analysis of what we're investigating the file disk structure.
When you get the software, which choose software to install, deselect everything.
So basically install a minimum system, more or less the same with CentOS, 256 megabram.
For me this cosy disk didn't work, so I switched it to an AKID disk, again, not pre-assigned or not split.
You'll need to, you'll be prompted for an FTP location, so go to the mirror, list site, and select a FTP site near you,
and the directory in that mirror, FTP mirror that's located next to you will be 5.1 for such ISO, for such i3.06.
And now, excuse me while I take some T, and then we'll be right back,
what's going into LPI exam 101 prep, hardware architecture, junior level administration,
topic 101, by Eardsheel senior programmer with IBM.
LPI exam objectives, configuring fundamentals by a setting, I'm reading.
You will learn to configure fundamental system hardware by making the correct settings in the system bias.
You will learn about configuration issues, such as the use of IBA, and the ID,
hard disks larger than one or two four centers, enabling or disabling integration peripherals,
and configuring system with or without external peripherals, such as keyboards.
We will also discuss correct settings for IRQ, DMA, iO addresses, for all BIOS administered ports,
and for settings for handling errors.
And that has a weight objective of all the exams.
All the sections in the exams have a weight objective.
This has a weight objective of 1.
Now moving on to page 5 system and bias overview.
Again, I'm quoting from the documentation.
A modern personal computer or PC consists of a central processing unit CPU for performing calculations,
along with some memory for storing data that the process is using.
To make such a device useful, we attach preferred devices such as a keyboard, mice, displays, hard drives,
CDs, DVD drives, printer, scanners, network cards, which will allow us to enter store print, display, and transmit data.
In the computer just described, the memory used by the processor is called Random Access Memory RAM.
In a typical PC, the memory is volatile, meaning that it requires power to keep its data.
Turn off the PC, and the memory is wiped clean.
Put another way, when we turn off a PC, we turn it into collection of hardware components that will do nothing until reprogrammed.
This reprogramming occurs when we turn on the machine.
This is called bootstrapping or booting the computer.
The bias stands for basic input output system.
And from Wikipedia, the principal duties of the main bias during the power on self-test are as follows.
Verify the integrity of the bias code itself.
To turn the reason the power on self-test is being executed, find size, verify, system, main memory,
discover initialized catalog all system buses and devices, pass control to other specialized biases.
If and when required, provide a user interface for system configuration.
Identify, organize, and select which devices are available for booting, construct whatever system environments that is required by the target OS.
I find that relatively difficult to understand, so I've gone out and found a document which explains the bootup process of a PC.
Now, when you turn off your computer, as the IBM document states, it's forgotten everything.
So when you turn on your computer, your processor has no instructions on what to do.
It has no idea whether it's a server, a PC, a laptop, or whatever.
So there's a break-com trail left for the processor so that it can learn more and more and more stuff.
So the term bootstrapping occurs, and it's a sort of joke that was introduced in the 50s,
again, according to Wikipedia, from a legend of Baron Wunchhausen, who was able to pull himself up by his bootstraps on Stuck in a Marsh.
So after you go through this boot sequence, I think you'll understand what sort of chain is involved.
Okay, so you turn on the power socket, and the power goes to the power supply.
The power comes out of the power supply, and it's on the motherboard.
The first thing that the motherboard does is sends a reset to the CPU.
This may seem strange, but the CPU, the motherboard is waiting, or chipset, or whatever, is waiting for what's called a power-good signal to come in.
And then, when it receives that power-good signal, it knows that the power supply is good and everything's working.
It knows what good means is plus five volts, and it can be anything between plus three and plus six volts.
So it gets that, it says, okay, the power supply is okay.
I'm now going to clear the reset flag, and I'm going to allow the CPU power into the CPU.
Now, once the CPU gets the power, in other words, the reset flag is cured, it knows only one thing,
and that's to go and start reading in memory, reading in code from address FFFF000, right at the end of the system memory.
There's only 16 bytes of code there, but all that usually contains a jump to where it's supposed to go to find the rest of the real bias program.
The bias program will start a power-on self-test, and if there are any errors, you'll hear beeps, just a side note there.
If you are troubleshooting a PC, it's not coming up, it's not boosting, you don't know what's wrong.
Usually, most motherboards, if you have a series of audible alerts, audible beeps that occur.
For example, on a MI system, five beeps might be a problem with your processor.
If you're troubleshooting it, find out what the motherboard type is, download PDF about the documentation, go to the Oracle section,
and you should be able to hear what's wrong with the motherboard and replace that component, and then move on your merry way.
Anyway, the bias continues on, and the first thing it will do is try and look for a video card, and this is typically at location C000000 in memory, and then it will call and execute the bias on the video card.
This is the first indication that you will see that something is going on, and it also explains why the video card is usually the first thing that you see coming up rather than all the other checks from the bias.
Excuse me. Then the bias will go and do the exact same thing for other devices that you find.
For instance, array controllers if you have them, other things, and then it will display a startup screen, it will do some more tests, and then it will start doing a system inventory of sorts.
Now, there's actually two types of booting. One is a warm boot, and one is a cold boot, so a cold boot is when the computer is physically turned off, no power going anywhere, and when you turn it back on, it's called a cold boot.
A warm boot is when you hit the reset switch, and when you hit the reset switch, it sends that reset signal that we were talking about before to the processor, and it also sets a little flag to say that yes, it's been a warm boot.
When this breadcomb trail is the CPU and the bias comes along to that point, it can go, okay, this is actually a warm boot that's occurring, or it's a cold boot that's occurring.
During the system inventory thing, it takes a look at the hard disks that are in there, while many cylinders, platters, that sort of thing will get into that later on.
Comports on the LBT ports that are available. This is also, after this, it'll go and do the plug-on-place stuff, which we'll also be talking about later, and you'll see a summary screen.
And then, depending on the settings on the bias, it'll start looking for a boot device to boot, so typically it might look for a floppy disk, and it might look for a CD-ROM, and it might look for a hard disk, and then if you can't find out, it might try to end that boot or something.
Typically, for an Linux operating system, it'll look for the master boot record starting at the first bootable disk at cylinder zero, head zero, sector one, which is the first sector.
It'll then start reading in code into the processor from there, and that'll be typically bootloader, well, for Linux it'll be typically a bootloader, like Lilo or Grub, which we will also be covering later on.
So that's the end of this little side note on the boot process.
And that's the end of this episode in the mini-series on LPI certification for Hacker Public Radio.
For feedback, corrections, or contributions on the series, please email me at ken.valon.asgmail.com.
For general feedback on Hacker Public Radio, you can email feedback at hackerpublicradio.org.
Remember, Hacker Public Radio is for the community and by the community.
So if you'd like to do a show, a series of show rules, or provide some other assistance, please email admin at hackerpublicradio.org.
With that, I'd like to thank you for listening, and wish you a very good day.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by carro.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all your hosting needs.
Thank you very much.

389
hpr_transcripts/hpr0014.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,389 @@
Episode: 14
Title: HPR0014: Databases 101 Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0014/hpr0014.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:19:26
---
In the next video...
It's the time
Another companionship
Hello world and welcome to After Public Radio.
I am Stank Doug and on today's episode we are going to continue our in-depth series, our
many series on databases, talking about from the ground up how they work, the fundamentals
and basics and working our way up to some more advanced topics.
This is episode two in the series so if you are just joining us I highly suggest you
go back and find episode one.
You can find that at hackerpublicradio.org and you can check to see that and a lot of
other great episodes on great topics but today we are going to continue with some relational
database management system topics and the first episode we did talk about databases in
general and touched on the idea of relational databases but we didn't get too much in
the terminology.
I wanted to take a break and let the first part of that kind of sink in and make sure we
are all on the same page and today we are going to talk about specifically our DBMS systems
or relational database management systems which is the most common and most prevalent type
of database management system out there.
The relational database management system is based on something called a relational model.
Obviously that is where the name comes from but what is a relational model?
One of the things we are going to do in this series is try to break down a lot of this
terminology.
I do think sometimes it is silly and overkill to make up all these puzzle words and terminology
to try to explain something that really can be much simpler.
What they mean by a relational database management system and a relational model is simply that
your data inside of this management system has relationships between each other.
Now if you have just a text file as we talked about in the first episode of this series,
if you just have a text file you don't really need a database system.
If you just have a list of names and phone numbers or something very basic but as soon
you add any level of complexity in there that you think that you are going to need something
to maintain large volumes and numbers of data or a large amount of data, that is when
you are going to want some sort of database management system and again relational database
management system being the most common.
The easiest way probably to visualize how data is stored in a relational database management
system which we are going to refer to as RDBMS from now on, envision a spreadsheet.
Any data stored in a relational or an RDBMS is stored in a two-dimensional array, aka
a spreadsheet.
Now, not a spreadsheet like Microsoft Office Excel or OpenOffice.org or any of those
type things.
It is easy to visualize that way but it is not an application.
It is a two-dimensional array.
That is to say that there are a certain number of rows and a certain number of columns and
they make up something called a table.
A table is the primary way that data is stored in an RDBMS so you can have a table that
is a list of people's name and phone number.
For example, again, you probably wouldn't use it if you are using a simple example like
that but if you are using something a little bit more complex like say you had an online
website that was taking orders.
Well, if you think about that, you need a lot of information to take orders.
You need people's name and address.
You need a lot of their billing information.
You need a catalog with what you are selling and the prices of those items, maybe descriptions,
pictures, all kinds of data.
If we go back to what we talked about in episode one, you could theoretically put all that
in one big line in a text file somewhere but as soon as you reach any quantity of records,
it is going to get confusing.
There is going to be a lot of repetition.
If somebody comes in and places five orders, they are going to have five records with the
same information all of it.
It is a lot of wasted space, inefficient accessing of the data.
That is when an RDBMS is going to come in.
What you do in an RDBMS is break down your data.
There is something called normal form, normalization and what you are going to do in the normalization
process is you are going to sit down and analyze the data that you have and you are going
to break it down into a series of tables or spreadsheets if you want to think about that
anyway.
You can even sit down and I do this all the time for a lot of the projects that we work
on in Binrib, sit down even on a napkin or a piece of paper or there are plenty of tools,
gooey tools that you can use to do this on a computer.
Sit down and kind of design and think about all the different data that you are going
to have and going to be tracking.
You have to do a lot of planning and preparation, it is not something you kind of do off the
cup.
You actually have to sit down and do some analysis and decide what data you are going to
need in your particular system and then how can you break that data up logically and
that process is called normalization.
Normalization in layman's terms is to break down your data so that there is no repetition
that data all works together and cooperates and is reliable and makes it easy to maintain
and read.
Now there are different types of normalization, different levels I should say of normalization
that goes up to fifth and sometimes people say six normal form.
We are not going to emphasize that now we might come back to that later on in another episode
but for now just think that you want to get your data spread out in such a way that let's
go back to the orders example that I used earlier.
You don't want one big text file with all of that data stored on there.
What you want to do is break that up into smaller logical segments so that it is easier
to maintain.
In one table or one text file or however you is easier for you to envision it, you want
to break that data into one entity.
You do not want to put all that in one entity.
You want to break that up so that it is in several different tables or entities logically
broken down.
For example, if you are running an online store, one bit of data that you are going to
have to have is your product line and information about it.
You are going to have a product name, maybe the size, the color, the price, things like
that.
Anything that has to do with that product, you probably want to separate that off into
its own database or excuse me into its own table inside of your database.
That way as you add new products to it, they only get added to this one table.
It is easily updated.
There is no confusion.
It is all in one place and one logical format.
If you ever wanted to do a report on a list of all the items that you have for sale, you
could do that very easily by just putting the data out of this table.
That data really is somewhat irrelevant of the other parts of your system.
Another part of your system of course would be the names of people who place orders.
Your customer list would probably be a separate entity because the customers are independent
of the products.
You probably would have a separate table when someone comes to your website and decides
to order something, they are going to have to register and give you their name, address,
phone number possibly, maybe credit card number could go in there.
Again, I am just making this up as we go along.
You would have to do an analysis on your own system to decide what best fits for you.
Then you might have a third one, a third table for the actual order of some sales.
This table one and table two is a list of products and a list of customers respectively,
but how do those two go together?
This customer may order items one, five, and seven, but this next customer may order
items one, two, and four, and how do you make those things work together?
Well you probably would have a third table when a customer places an order that ties those
two things together.
You see that these tables while independent in nature by the nature of their data, customer
table, product table, you can see that those are independent by the logical breakdown of
their data.
You see that they actually do have relationships and there is where that word comes back
into play.
They do have relationships between those tables and that is where you are also going to sit
down in your analysis and decide how you are going to store that data.
I guess to put it in a question form to make you think about it, what would you do or
how would you find out if customer number four, what items did he order?
Well it is not quite so simple as pulling only the ones where that customer's name matches
the order.
He may have multiple orders.
You got to be careful that someone else in there may not have ordered the same thing
that you are pulling the right data.
So all those relationships are important in the design and layout of your database.
I know this is kind of tricky to visualize via audio only on a radio show, but I am
trying to break this down into the most simplistic terms that I can.
So what you should be envisioning now in front of you are three different spreadsheets in
the example I gave you.
A three different tables is the proper term, table of customers, table of products, and
then a table, third table that ties those together called orders.
So when a customer comes to the site, the site is going to pull from the products table
and give them a list of products as they page through them.
You can imagine Amazon and all the products that they have is pulling out of those products
tables and displaying them on the screen.
If you register, it's going to create a record for you in the customer's table.
And if you ever place an order, it's going to insert a record then into your orders table
or their orders table.
Now, that's very simplistic because a whole lot going on besides that, but you can see
that process.
And when you write that order in there, it's going to have your name, or probably some
sort of numeric reference to your name to make it a little bit quicker.
For ease of thought here, it's going to have your name, and then it's going to have the
product name that you bought.
Now it doesn't have to have the price, or the color, or the size, or any of that necessarily,
depending on how you lay it out of size as an option, you might have to put that in there.
But actually, by putting in just the name of the customer and the name of the product,
it's tying the data from those two together and it can read those tables to pull the rest
of the data.
So it knows what color you ordered.
It knows what size you ordered because it pulls it from that table.
And those are the relationships in a relational database management system.
So I've used the word table.
Let's break down and analyze what exactly is a table.
I described as a spreadsheet earlier.
So if you've used Excel or any kind of spreadsheet application, you know across the top, you
have several columns.
And each one of those columns, I think by default, most spreadsheet applications will
say A, B, C, D, E, F, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, you have all the columns at the top and on the left, you have rows.
And that's just simply how many rows of data that you have.
So you may have a list of five customers.
If you want to visualize, imagine across the top, what are you going to put in column A?
Customer name, for example.
And column B might be street address.
Column three might be state four, city five, zip code, et cetera, et cetera.
So each one of those columns has a different type of data in it.
And imagine it, or even if you want to while we're listening to this type then, so you
can visualize it.
But you see that each one of those columns has a different type of data in it.
You don't want to mix in that.
You don't want to on your next row.
Oh, well, I'll put the address in column A this time.
And the name over in column C, logically, who does that when they put in a spreadsheet?
You have it all nice and neat, so it's readable and easy to understand the data that's
in there.
Well, the same holds true when you're putting data into a database.
So as a matter of fact, that's one of the benefits of a database to keep everything
nice and organized.
So you'll have a customer table.
And each one of those columns that we refer to in a spreadsheet, the proper name and
database terminology for that, those are your field names.
You're going to call a unique field, for example, customer name, or C name, or whatever
you want to call it.
Just plain old name, whatever you call it.
As long as it's unique, you can call those fields, whatever you want.
You can have as many fields as you deem necessary.
Again, the relational database management systems have, there is some theoretical limit, but
it's so ridiculous that nobody probably listening to this show is ever going to run into a situation
where they don't have enough room or the database management system doesn't allow them to
have enough fields.
So you're going to create a bunch of fields and you're going to define those field data
types.
For example, if the field you decide to call it customer name, or customer or underscore
name, or something like that, you're going to define it as a data type of what kind of
data is alphanumeric, which is, and I'm not going to go into the terms, but there's different
ways that you define that.
You say, okay, well, this is going to be an alphanumeric field, and it's going to be a
length of, I don't know, 50, or however long you think the longest name you might run into.
Always error on the side of caution, and there are some database tricks and data types
that you can use that are variable length.
We'll come back to that in a later episode, but for now, just understand you're going
to define the data type.
One of the other fields we mentioned is price, for example, well, price is a numeric
data type.
You're never going to put in a BC for a price, it doesn't make sense.
So you probably define that field as a numeric type.
So you put all that in there, just like you would in the spreadsheet, but you're going
to put these into a table table, you're going to define all those data types and the names
of them, and then every time you put a record into that data, a record is equivalent to saying
a row in your spreadsheet visualization.
So you're thinking of a spreadsheet, and let's say you're manually taking orders over
the phone and in a spreadsheet, and in Microsoft Excel, you type in all that information every
time someone takes an order, what a nightmare that could be.
You type in one row of information about somebody that is a record in database terms.
That is one row across filling in all, or most of the fields that you define at the top
of the name, the address, the phone number, et cetera.
And certain information, of course, is required.
You can't process someone's order if they don't give you a credit card number, for example,
or if they don't give you a shipping address.
So all these things factor in there as well.
We're going to come back to some database design, probably in a later episode as well.
But right now, you should have, visually, in your mind, several spreadsheets, aka tables,
and we're going to, from now on, get in the habit of calling them tables, because that
is the proper name.
You can visually think a spreadsheet, but there are two dimensional arrays called tables.
The tables have all of your fields defined in them, which again is across the top for
a visualization aspect.
And then every time you have a complete row of data in there, a rows are referred to as
records.
So this is all your data stored in there.
So let's imagine you've been a business for a month, and you have a database filled
with at least those three tables I mentioned, a customer's table, a product's table, and
an order's table.
So as you add new products to your store, all you have to do is add that product into
your product's table.
As new customers come in, it's going to add a new row to your customer table, and it's
going to continually grow, and this is where relational database management system shine
is the more data you put in there, they can still read and write that data very efficiently.
So that's one of the good benefits of our GVMS.
The other thing we probably want to talk about on this show is we mentioned these tables
and having relationships together, well, I'm going to leave, this is kind of a very deep
topic, but it's critical, it is the most important thing in understanding databases and relational
databases is the concept of keys.
We talked about these tables having relationships between each other, but how we kind of glossed
over that and intentionally so, well, that database has to relate to each other somehow,
and it has to be in design in such a way that you can look data up between the two of them.
If the data does not have relations between them, if they do not have relationships between
them, then again, you might not need a database management system or you might not need these
all together in the same database itself.
The whole point is to have relationships between that data.
So again, we go back to the products table and a customer's table, well, how do you tie
those two together?
Well each time you insert a table into a database, you want to, you don't have to, but you
want to, to take advantage and properly use databases, you want to define some unique
identifier for every table.
And that's what normalization that we refer to at the beginning, normalization, you don't
want to repeat any data anywhere.
You want to try to make every piece of data only once in the database because ASSafe space
be, you don't want to have to update multiple locations anytime something changes.
What if the color of one of your products changes?
If you've got it just in your products table, there's only one place that you can change
it.
But if it's also over here in the order table or in some other descriptions tables, you've
got this independent and not tied back to that, you can be updating data in a bunch of
different places and you don't have data integrity anymore, you don't have your data maintained,
you may forget to change it in a bunch of other places.
So what you want to do in these tables is logically break them down in such a way where you
define something called a primary key.
And a primary key on a, on let's say our customer database, for example, it could be a name
and we're going to go with name for right now, a name, some unique way to look up information
in that table.
In that table, if I've got a table with 500 people in there, I only want to find one particular
customer.
How do I do that?
Well, in the last, in the first episode, we talked about if you had a text file and all
that data in there and you have to go searching through it to find one unique name, one person,
it's going to be difficult.
You don't have to parse through that entire thing and all this extraneous data that you really
don't need.
Well, in an RDBMS, the data is stored in such a way that you can search much quicker and
much more efficiently, you define a primary key, which is indexed so that when you go looking
for something, it's going to go right to that data infinitely so, so much faster than
writing directly to a text file or some other format.
So if you only wanted to look up, I don't know, David Letterman, just see what he's ordered
from your site.
I don't know why that name popped into my head, but it did.
So you go in there and you search for that name.
It's a unique ID and the example that we're using here.
And you can say, okay, there he is.
Here's his address, phone number, so you went straight to him.
Believe it or not, that's actually a very bad idea.
But if your actual user that you were looking up was John Smith or some common name, you
could have multiple John Smiths with different addresses, they're completely different people.
So when you define your primary key, you have to be very careful, you have to come up with
some unique identifier to be able to tell that.
Back to your products table, for example, you might not be able to use a product name
as your primary key.
But if the name product name was antivirus, well, there's several different antivirus
software packages.
How are you going to tell one from another?
You're going to have to come up with either a longer, more unique name every time, or
more than likely what's going to happen and what most places do is they'll use a numeric
system, whether it's auto numbers, starting at one, to uniquely identify every product
in there.
Maybe assign some sort of code number, maybe something that's stored in a third-party
database, so AV1 for the first antivirus product, AV2 for the second antivirus product.
Over in the customer's table, think of some unique identifier that you could use to uniquely
identify a person.
The most common one that we all know is probably social security number, and there's a lot
of controversy over using that number.
It is used very frequently as unique identifier because theoretically, it's unique to every
person in the United States.
They all have a social security number, but that may not be safe to use, first of all.
If you're dealing with international, you might not have a social security number, so that
becomes a pitfall.
Really, what I'm getting at here is part of the analysis that you're going to do when
you lay your tables out is to come up with something unique that you can identify and
individual row.
You have to be able to do that in our DVMS.
You have to somehow come up with a way where you can find one row, one record of data in
there.
I think that's probably a good place to leave you thinking until we come back to another
episode and we'll follow up on this, but how would you break something down?
How would you uniquely identify a person?
That's probably the question I'm going to leave you with with this episode.
How would you uniquely identify with a person in any scenario or in any database?
How do you think and use it in reference to the application?
How does the United States government uniquely identify a person's social security number?
One of the first things that jumps to mind.
How does your state uniquely identify you in their database?
They could use the social security number, but technically, they should not.
What do you think they might use?
What about your school or your college or university or even high school?
How do you think they uniquely identify you?
They again could use the social security number, which is universally unique in the United
States, again, theoretically, but they shouldn't be using that either.
So what might they use?
What's different that could be unique for them to identify one individual person?
So that's a good question to leave you with this time.
I'll do a quick recap on some of the important terms and things that we brought up this episode.
We talked about RGBMS, relational database management system, and how they have relationships.
The key word in that is relationships.
Your data has to have relationships with the other data in your database.
Otherwise, there's no point in having it or no point in using it.
If you've just got one list of data, then there's no need in using an RGBMS.
But if you do decide that you're going that direction and you are going to need that,
then you're going to break your data down into logical clusters, remove repetition, don't
use reuse data.
Make sure the data exists only in one place as best you can, and this process is called
normalization.
And there are different levels of normalization that we did not go into that we'll hold
for another episode.
And the design of your database logically, think ahead of how you're going to uniquely
identify all of that data.
Sometimes you break down all of your data, but you're still going to have to add a little
bit more data to uniquely identify it.
In the example we talked about tonight, we said products.
Anti-virus may not be a good enough example.
Even, honestly, even Norton antivirus might not be good enough because there's different
versions of it.
So how would you uniquely identify it?
Would it be NAV1 for Norton antivirus version 1, NAV2 for version 2, et cetera, et cetera?
That's the kind of stuff you need to think about when you're designing your databases.
So I'm going to plant that in your head for this week and let you all think about it.
The question you should be having your head and think about when we start the next episode
in this many series will be how to uniquely identify a person, just as an exercise to
get you thinking for the next episode.
So thank you for your time this week, and we will see you again on an upcoming episode
of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio, HPR, sponsored by carrow.net, so head on
over to C-A-R-O-DOT-E-T for all your hopes for new Hacker Public Radio.

17
hpr_transcripts/hpr0015.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
Episode: 15
Title: HPR0015: Spring Cleaning
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0015/hpr0015.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:17:52
---
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

127
hpr_transcripts/hpr0016.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
Episode: 16
Title: HPR0016: Benefits of Virtualization
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0016/hpr0016.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:18:58
---
.
Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'll be your host, DeepGeek.
Today is episode one in a series I'm doing on virtual machine technology.
And today's episode is called Benefits of Virtual Machines.
There's a campaign article on dockdroppers.org called Benefits of Virtual Machines.
And I'll be going over this article I wrote.
This is my way of planning it out.
And I will embellish upon what I have in the article as I see fit as I go.
But I want to begin documenting these things both online in a searchable web format,
as well as having the radio programs.
And the reason why I'm just going over the benefits of virtual machines was because I originally want to make this introduction to virtual machines with QMU,
which is a particular software package.
But I found that breaking it down, it was too poor a topic, you know, just coming out and introducing it.
Because I had to digress constantly into why you would want to run a virtual machine.
Because as with everything, there is a break in period where an learning curve experience
and virtual machine technology can get very deep and heavy, which is why you have to have a many series about it.
So I thought I would just try to answer the question, you know, why would I want to learn how to use this technology?
You know, virtual machines, let's get started.
Also known as just virtualization is currently a popular topic in computerization.
But in this episode is all for the benefit people who are unfamiliar with using this computer technology.
This article will explain the benefits of using virtualization.
To be incredibly brief, a virtual machine is a simulation of a computer running on a computer.
Don't confuse this with some security applications known as jailing.
It's not the same thing.
And also don't confuse this with certain programming languages that have a limited virtual machine
to enhance the languages portability between computing platforms as a Java virtual machine.
No, this technology is about simulating on a computer, having a simulation of like an Intel compatible, you know, a 8386 compatible.
With a certain kind of bus and half a gigabyte of memory.
And it has a sound card and network cards.
And it's got this size of 10 gigabytes, you know, a specific machine that doesn't exist in the real world, that we're running a simulation of.
What can be achieved by doing this?
Well, the first one that comes to mind for me, which is because it was the impetus for me to come to this technology,
running one operating system inside of another operating system.
You can, for example, run a Linux system within a Windows system or vice versa, you know, a Windows system within a Linux system.
This is a favorite of people who switched from one operating system to another for the day they need.
You can find that there is still a need to occasionally run an old program.
So, you know, you can set up the virtual machine, let's say you have saved certain software packages from your old, your old operating system.
And you're doing almost everything on your new operating system.
Run the virtual machine, run the operating system of the older that you used to use, and run the favorite application.
And it'll come up as an application window on your desktop, on your new operating system.
Okay. Another thing we can do with this technology is we can sandbox untrusted applications.
You know, if a program is not fully trusted, you can effectively isolate it onto a virtual machine.
So, it doesn't affect one's main system.
Now, many of these virtualization packages use a file on the disk, and that file simulates the disk drive on the simulated machine.
So, I could say set up a 10 gigabyte file and install Linux onto it if I was using Windows.
And that to the Linux system on the virtual machine, that file would look like the whole disk.
And then I began doing whatever I had to do within that disk.
Now, there's a range of possibilities that arises if you do this.
You know, at the lowest end of the spectrum, at least the daring one, is you can just try out a piece of software.
You know, you might not know if installing it onto the main system could conflict with something you already have existing.
You don't even know if you might like it.
So, let's say you want to try a new mail application.
You know, some mail applications might have certain dependencies and call certain payments into play.
And you might not be aware of it. You could install that mail application just as an example.
And see if you like it. See what kind of side effects it has. See if it installs anything else.
That's the simplest case.
Now, on the more daring end of the spectrum of sandboxing, you could actually surf the web on an OS and browse a combination known to be susceptible to malware.
You know, you remember, you know, if you have a problem, you can delete the virtual system as easily as deleting a file.
But you can keep that file around, keep running the system and observe the behavior.
I used to pride myself in my Windows days. I'm a Linux person now.
And I'm not catching viruses, but when I learned how to use this technology, one of the things I went out and did was run Windows as a simulated system.
And I went out and purposely caught malware and watched what it was like, watched what other people was succumbing to, which I had assiduously avoided.
Now, another application of using virtual machines is to test hardware changes.
Now, in this scenario, you can set up a system and you can just try changing the hardware on it.
The most common experience in doing this is seeing how much memory an application works best under.
Now, you know, you can try paring back the amount of memory the virtual machine has and see how much you can get away with.
And you can also simulate having more memory than you actually have.
Now, if you think about that for a second, you're going, well, wait, if you're simulating more memory, you're still going to swap that extra memory someplace.
But by shifting it to the virtual machine, you can see how much of that swapping is taking place in the virtual machine's virtual memory and the real memory.
In other words, to the virtual machine, you won't have a swap at a certain point, even to know on your real machine, it will overallocate the memory and use the swap file.
And that's, you know, very briefly what some people use this technology for is to justify expanding a machine.
I've also had problems with this one time. I accidentally changed the bus structure of a virtual machine and just the software just couldn't deal with this crap down.
You know, the bus was removed, you know, it can do all kinds of crazy stuff with this.
Now, something that students and universities do with this is they build simulations of clusters.
Now, you know, you got to think about this. If you're in a programming class and you're learning cluster programming, you know, the university has a cluster and you got to try your program on it.
Now, doesn't it make sense to have a simulation of the cluster on your computer and to go through the generations of writing a program and then only actually running the program on a cluster once you get the basic debugging done?
Doesn't that save you time and waiting for the big computer as well as saving runtime on the big cluster?
And now, it's related to this is if you're a networking student or, you know, even if you're, you know, playing a game of what if say in a commercial application, you can virtualize and set up an imaginary dummy network configuration.
Instead of building a physical computer network and see if it will work out on the virtual machine before going to the bother of building it.
Now, one of the more obscure things that gets done with this technology is standardized development machines.
Some virtual machine packages allow developers to develop new software on a standard machine.
You know, developers of software can be and geographically for fun places using widely different problem hardware platforms.
And it helps them to have be developing the software on the same prototype hardware so all the bugs can be redone, you know, replayed out.
So an example of this is the up and coming React OS, which is being developed. React OS is an attempt to building a Windows clone from the bomb up.
You know, we aren't allowed to reverse engineer windows, but to just build something that responds, you know, do that response to all the windows calls, the API calls, you can attempt.
And they are currently distributing their test systems in VMware and QMU files and they send around the test machine with the software on it.
Now, the last example I want to give you is that of retro computing.
Now, older computer types may have extensive software collections that were used on now obsolete systems.
You know, they could have artwork applications that were written in a bygone era of computing and they can rerun that now by simulating an older computer with an older operating system.
And this generates an nostalgia experience for some people, you know.
But not only in the nostalgia, you know, there's a relay technology, you know, emulators are not new per se, but they aren't as general as virtual machines.
There used to be a emulator that emulated old deck machines to digital equipment corporations under UNIX.
The problem was is that the deck machines were often used for physical running physical plants.
And what happened was, there's a bunch of nuclear power plants were built that used deck machines that deck went out of business.
And the actual replacement part industry lasted for a prolonged period of time because they couldn't close these nuclear power plants.
And then after fixing the old deck hardware, they began to simulate the old deck hardware so that newer, more modern computers could still interface to running the plant.
So that is an actual heavy-duty industrial use of a related technology.
So I try to answer the question, especially because why a person would want to run virtual machine technology?
I try to explain it with some, with it, by giving you first a simplified definition.
I mentioned a few things not to confuse it with and then I gave you a series of examples to show you the kind of usage different people get of this technology.
And this concludes, this is the beginning of the end for episode one from Deep Geek of virtual machines.
And I want to close out with another geek tidbit.
Let's have a look at a famous historical computer geek.
I think you guys really ought to know about what to research. Donald Irvin Cunuth, born in 1938, is still kicking around as best we know.
Cunuth is a famous, famous computer science. He is the father of mathematically proving the efficiency of computer algorithms.
And his platform for this was a series of books of classical computer science known as the Art of Computer Programming.
And I actually got the searches and sorting volume of this. It was a little too heady for me.
I couldn't understand everything this guy was trying to get a course, but he would give you an algorithm for sorting and show you three or four algorithms.
And then he would prove with calculus mathematically which one would be the fastest every time.
This is a brilliant guy, you know, to get to a fact where you can prove something like that in math.
Instead of just like what most people in my skill set would just benchmark at a billion times instead. He could prove it mathematically.
Donald Irvin Cunuth also gave us the late tech typesetting software. And this is a software that you can use on your Unish-like computer operating systems and approach the typesetting quality of book publishers.
And the reason he built that was because he showed a lot of calculus and he couldn't get the signals to print right.
So he got into typesetting just to pass this down. He's also done many many other things.
Wikipedia has a wonderful article that is a great jumping off point to looking up this fellow.
So I hope you research him out a little bit and enjoy what you learn.
This concludes today's episode of Hacker Public Radio. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by Kero.net. We'll head on over to C-A-R-O.N-T for all your hosting needs.
Thank you very much.

44
hpr_transcripts/hpr0017.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
Episode: 17
Title: HPR0017: Torrentflux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0017/hpr0017.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:19:20
---
Music
Welcome to another episode of HPR, I'm your host Enigma, and today I will be talking
about Torrent Flux. Torrent Flux is a multi-user GUI for BitTornado. It has a PHP front end
and a MySQL back end. It can manage all downloads in a central location to make life easy
to your and not have a your favorite Torrent application of choice on your desktop. It's centralized.
You can stick it on a server somewhere and not really worry about having it suck your resources
on your local machine. Multiple users can upload files at the same time. It can search
sites from the GUI with some plugins for your favorite Torrent search engine of choice.
And you could have some possible automation to the process, which I'll talk about later.
Your requirements, a Linux box installed and working. It's been tested on Debian Red Hat
Fedora. Personally, I use mine on SNOS, which is Red Hat Enterprise, an Apache web server.
PHP Apache module version 4.1 or higher with a MySQL database server, and it also supports
other ODBC databases. Python 2.2 or higher. SC Linux should be turned off or configured
to allow Torrent Flux to work with files in a specific application path. And Safe Mode
must be turned off in the PHP.Anyfile Torrent Flux reads writes files that Safe Mode would
restrict. And basically, it's an easy install. You go to the website and untar the archive.
You want to download. You create the database in MySQL. And that has, or read me, that basically
will walk you through the process of creating the database. You build the Torrent Flux tables
by running a SQL script that's provided in the tar archive. And then you want to edit
your config.php for the database settings on that particular box. You want to browse
to the site that you have. You have to have Apache running. Browse to your local post.
And set up the password and other directory info. And you must either turn off or put
in Allow Mode SC Linux. Basically, you can upload or search from Torrents on the main
screen of the Torrent Flux website. It will auto-seed the Torrent after completion, but
that can be turned off. You can select files out of Torrents if you only want to download
a specific file from that Torrent. It also has a history feature where you can basically
keep track of all the Torrents you've downloaded. It has a nice GUI interface that tells you
how much disk space you have left on the specific drive. It's got multi-user management
with disk quotas, so you can have a user set up where you can only use 10% of your disk
space or whatever you wanted to do with that. It's very easy to use interface and customisable.
You can auto-ft. You can have customization scripts within the tool that you can auto-ftp
the Torrent once it's finished to another location via of a script. It's got an RSS feed
built in with new Torrents, and that's about it for today. Thanks to all the hosts that
have helped out with HPR so far, we haven't missed a day yet, and I'd like to keep that
going. If you'd like to contribute to HPR, please email me at admin at hackerpublicradio.org
or if you have feedback on any of the shows, please email feedback at hackerpublicradio.org
and have a nice day.

656
hpr_transcripts/hpr0018.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,656 @@
Episode: 18
Title: HPR0018: An Interview with Ed Piskor
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0018/hpr0018.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:23:46
---
So
Hello everybody and welcome to Hacker Public Radio, the suspect dog with you on this
episode.
And today we actually have a very special guest on the show, somebody who, if you read
the banner at forums, you might have seen him enter recently and talk about a project
that he's working on, Ed Piscore is joining the show with today.
And we're going to talk about his latest book, his latest graphic novel called Lizzy Wig,
the One Freak, which is a graphic novel about, well actually I guess we'll go into what
it's about in a few seconds, but first of all, Ed, thank you for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, thanks, real good to talk to you, Ed.
Alright, so, first impressions of the book, alright, you ready for this?
I'm here.
Alright, so, first of all, thank you for sending me the copy, I appreciate it.
It was weird, first of all, there's a weird backstory here that you and I know that I guess
we could share is I was traveling a lot during this, when you sent me this book and I
wasn't able to get my hands on it, I was looking forward to reading it through the holidays,
I came back and I couldn't get into my PO box because I really wanted to read this
on the flight I had coming up, I flew out to San Diego, shots just to Sevant and the
guys out in San Diego, generic, and I was looking forward to reading it on the plane, however,
the post office was closed because it was the 31st and the first for the only two days
that I was home, so when I tried to go was a Sunday and a holiday, so I couldn't get
the stupid thing, so I didn't get the reading on the plane, but I did get it when I got
back, and very excited, the first thing I did was flip the book over, first of all, let's
talk the size of the book, now what are the dimensions here?
It's like a seven and a half inch square, so seven and a half inches all around.
Perfect square, so first thing I did, I picked up the book, nice glossy cover, I was
impressed that I wasn't sure what to expect if this was going to be stapled together quite
honestly, I wasn't expecting this, it came in great shape, I'm very impressed, it's bound
very well, I'm a little bit anal about my books too, I'm one of those guys that
I can't stand people who bend the front cover back around the book while they're reading
it, oh man that bug's that army for some reason, that's a book, I know what you're talking
about man, I know what you're talking about, I hate where people fit in front of me and
they take a look at my club, they can then just manipulate it all weird and roll it up
and put it in their pocket and it just makes you want to cry man, it worked hard on this
stuff, you know?
That's a book man, you can't do that, that's like, I don't know, sacrilege or something,
I just can't do that to books and anyway, so mine is still even though I've read the whole
thing, the spine is still perfect, no cracks, no creases, so I will keep it in that condition
I hope, so the first thing I did I felt, pick it up my hands, I was impressed, it was
good binding, I was surprised at that, so if anybody's wondering about ordering something
online like that and wondering how it comes, it does come just you could buy this off
the shelf in any bookstore, and actually is this available in bookstores at all or is
it only online?
No, just distributing it myself, right, like with you, if you get in touch with a distributor
to pick up your stuff I mean, they just, like you end up losing money just by shipping
it to them and stuff like that, so I'm just handling it on my own.
Exactly, we found the same exact thing with our magazine, you have to front all the
shipping to get it to them and then there's such a delay in getting the sales numbers
back and getting paid for it, and then whatever they don't sell they don't pay you for, and
it's such, it's so hard to get into that market or into that distribution line, so I totally
understand what you're saying.
Yeah, in comics there's a monopoly, when it comes to distribution, this company called
Diamond, and since they're a monopoly, they can command that you give them, I think
it's 60% off to carry the book, and I mean, with each copy you're losing a lot of money,
that's crazy, so I think my audience is extravagant enough to find the book in the internet
the perfect way of distribution, but people talk about it, if they want it they'll find
it.
And that's the same thing with us, but also to throw in there, this is something that
the printed medium is, I love the printed medium, there's other ways of distributing online
and stuff, but I like the printed medium, it's somethings are just designed to work well
for it, and I think this is one of them.
There's a whole movement of web comics out there, and I don't know, there's just something
about looking at a screen, I like something tangible that you can kick back on the couch
and just, you know, step away from the computer for a second and, like, decompress.
Yeah, and they're out in a recliner or something.
Some things work better online, some things work better printed, it's just the nature
of it, and I think this is definitely something, I don't think I would like reading this online
as much as I do, having it printed.
So yeah, I saw the same way in there.
Yeah, so I think it also, first of all, I'm impressed with the printing and the way
this thing is put together, that I wasn't expecting, so that ended up being pretty good.
I didn't know if you were going to staple this out of your house and send it to me or what.
So nice glossy cover, nice thick card stock cover, and even the interior paper, see,
there's a lot in your artistic style, and we probably will come back to this later,
but in your artistic style, there's a lot of shading and colors, and you're not afraid
to make dark backgrounds and shadows and things like that to help offset it.
So nice thick paper inside, so it doesn't lead through to the other side, which is very
in something that I learned in doing the magazine that you have to be careful with.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, here's the first thing that made me say, uh-oh, wait a minute, flip it over to the back,
and on the back cover is a big, free, Kevin's thumper sticker, basically.
And I immediately thought to myself, oh no, this is going to be the Kevin Mittening story
again, we're going to hear the poor Kevin, Kevin got this, Kevin got that.
Well, and I began flipping through the pages.
First of all, the artwork was very interesting, and again, wasn't sure what to expect.
So I flipped through it, of course, it immediately looked interesting.
I'm going to go back to the page, you want to start reading.
First of all, thanks for the introduction, nice first page, you sent me.
I appreciate that.
Started reading it immediately, and I was kind of half reading it to be honest,
sitting in front of the TV, I just got home, I was trying to watch the news,
and picked this up and half reading it, and I found it about four pages into it.
I had to turn the TV off and concentrate on the book.
So you did a good job of engaging me within the first few pages.
And that's a big obstacle.
Yeah, that's a big obstacle overcome, I think, in most readers.
Americans sadly have a short attention span.
I don't think I'm as bad as most, but I guess I probably have my moments.
And first page, of course, the title, the first frame says,
The Mythology of Boynthump, aka Kevin Fennical Jr.
So there's the Kevin from the back.
So it obviously does have some relation to the free Kevin movement,
for obvious reasons, but this is not a book,
true or false, this is not a book about Kevin Midnick.
Yeah, it's definitely not a book about Kevin Midnick per se, though.
Somebody who knows the story of Midnick might recognize some scenarios and situations
that this character gets himself into every now and again.
Right, now is there, okay?
First of all, Kevin is good because,
not only you got Kevin Midnick, Kevin Poulson, you've got just the name Kevin,
for I don't know, weird reason seems like after name, because of them,
I guess because of some of the big names historically.
Is there any other significance to the Kevin J. Fennical Jr?
They're kind of, it doesn't have much to do with actor lore, so much as it does,
so much as it has to do with just my personal life.
I have a friend named Kevin.
He's in the computers, and he's very tech savvy.
His name is Kevin.
And the last name that you don't need to know.
And I worked with the guy in this real shitty call center here in Pittsburgh.
And the people were so in that that in the computer system where they sort of
had his name stored, they misspelled it.
They called him Kevin Fennical, so he was so pissed off about that.
And whenever I would call him Kevin Fennical,
he would screw up my name and we would just like make fun of each other
with calling each other retarded names and stuff.
Yeah, that's a great story.
It's just my way to get people to say Kevin Fennical over public airway and anywhere else.
One day we're going to cross in real life at a con or something like that.
You've got a point to him and I'll walk up and say, hey, you're Kevin Fennical.
Easy to do, man.
The point's up monitor.
Well, I was going to bring that up later in the show when I started breaking it down.
But yeah, the point's thump, first of all Michael, that's kind of unique.
I've never heard that.
It's a very, it's very onomatopoeia.
It's kind of like a point thump.
And then as I started reading, it actually some page 23.
I'm flipping to it right now.
Where in the book, there's a backstory of how he picked up the handle.
And I didn't get it.
I'm like, wait a minute.
That's, I don't get the punchline of this joke on page 23.
I'm like, well, I'm not quite getting that one.
You know, it's probably, it's probably a little bit inside.
And in the book, I just kind of chalked it up just a stoner humor.
I'm like, this guy's just stoned because I don't get that at all.
I'm not sure what that's about.
So, but anyway, okay.
So again, I'm worried that this is going to be another free Kevin book.
Or is he either going to be about Kevin?
And he's the main character, Kevin Mittnik, that is, which is not true.
Or it's going to be a book where the main character worships Kevin Mittnik.
It's going to tell us about all the injustices and stuff against Kevin Mittnik.
Now, not to dismiss them or put them down, it's just been done to death.
So, I was happy to read a few pages in that that is absolutely clearly not the case here.
Like I said, you did reference some things, some stories that may be tighter, some,
what is urban legends or myths or whatever you want to call it that may or may not have
been attributed to Kevin or other people in there.
You did a good job of mixing some real stories or, I guess, is that a,
is that not to be more on real stories?
Real, no, I guess there are real stories and some mythology and some,
I heard that he could do this and I heard he could, there was a reference in here about
whistling into the phone, you know, which was the point.
Yeah, that was one that's been told.
There were references like that in there.
Well, actually, let's back up and kind of go through the book.
But back to the opening of the book, the introduction here is,
you've got to main character that we've immediately realized is not Kevin Mittnik,
because you say Kevin Fennicle's doing it on the first panel.
And then like the first two or three pages are, I don't know what I call an interview pages,
basically people saying, oh, yeah, I know that guy.
This is what he's like.
And you get all these different viewpoints from all these different types of people.
And it, they're so varied that it is exactly like some of the myths and stories that
get spread around.
You know, people from the old, there's probably so many people that have said so many stories
about all these old hackers and probably only certain percentage of them are true.
Some of them are true that no one's ever thought were true.
I mean, it's good that you're creating a mythology off the character to start with.
Even though he's completely fictional, you're creating a mythology,
so it's kind of accurate.
And then, yeah, and then by page 12, this is where you really get to the narrative, I guess,
of the story, your main plot device, I guess would be Winston Smith as the name of the character
on a radio show called Off the Rocker.
Now, I do think that majority of our listeners,
the majority of our hacker listeners, will realize that that's a playoff of Off the Hook,
the TV show out of New York, 2600 radio show Off the Hook, and or Off the Wall, both shows
from Emanuel Goldstein.
And there's also a double reference there because Winston Smith and Emanuel Goldstein
both characters from 1984 by George Orwell.
Right.
So a lot of well-read hackers would have gotten that.
Quite a few probably didn't, to be honest.
I think so many of the forums didn't get the reference.
And I explained who Winston Smith.
Because I think they asked when you put up the sample pages on there.
And I had to say, right, man, that's 1984, man, you got to respect George Orwell here.
I guess I'm not that clever, man.
The narrator here, and it's not throughout the entire thing,
but he comes in when it's necessary to further the plot and to fill in some gaps
of the story, is Winston Smith hosting a radio show going out of the airways talking about
Kevin, aka Boinkthump here, in the present day, a radio show that you're listening to,
while the rest of the book is kind of talking about a young Boinkthump growing up,
and even getting the handle by, like I said, this early is page 23, was it, I said earlier?
Yeah, yeah, and we're on.
Yeah, so it's the story that you're watching the main character is when he was younger,
but every once in a while you'll come in with a, I don't know, a flash forward or a present day
narrative explaining what's going on to the main character as, I guess, I can't say real life,
but in the now.
Right, so in the present time context of the story, I guess.
There you go, see, you tell it better, I can't think of the proper term, the words here,
but the majority of it is following the adventures of this young guy.
First of all, okay, so the name we talked about, the other thing I got to ask you,
the other thing that jumps out of me within a couple of pages, and even on the cover,
but what I once I started reading is I suddenly found myself going, damn, homeboy has got a
throw, man, dude, it's got some hair. This guy has got a hair, I mean, that's, that is some hair,
man. That's like, you know, it's almost like a trademark of the character, I mean,
at first I'm like, man, what is this dude doing with the hair, and then kind of towards the end,
it's like, it fits him, it's like, it worked.
You know what I sort of lifted that from, was this kind of legendary picture of Kevin
Poulson, where he's sitting on, he's sitting on this table, and there are like a million rotary
phones all around him, and some like old payphones around him in the picture. He's got like this
mad 80s hair, man. I had to exaggerate a little bit for my own use, but that was kind of the
inspiration and just that ugly as 1970s 80s hairstyle. Exactly, exactly. And you know, that's
another thing, I guess we can talk about now too, is that you did a good job in keeping everything
in the proper timeframe. Like one thing I do is I'm a very critical reader for loop holes and
mistakes and things like that. You know, I'm the guy that watches a movie and says, dude, there's no
way he can do that with a cell phone because they hadn't invented that technology yet. I'm that guy.
So when I read this and I was looking for stuff like that, not because I wanted to pick it apart,
but just because it's what I do, and I got to say I didn't find a single one. I didn't find anything.
I was even looking at silly stuff, but you're going to laugh at this, but this is again, I guess
me being a weird hacker or just a weird nerd in general, but even like some of the background scenes,
you would have a car and I'm thinking, okay, what year was that model car started because I don't
know if it was invented yet. Like little weird stuff like that I look for. I couldn't catch anything
in the head book, so you should feel very proud of that. Thanks a lot, man. Like I did a lot of
research to try to make it as accurate as time as possible, but also to tell you the truth,
you know, when you're dealing with the highest form of technology that we're really playing around
with in this issue is a telephone, then you're not going to see too many discrepancies when it comes to
when it comes to different models or something like that. Like when we start getting into computers,
that's probably where I'm going to get an email from you telling me how I screwed up for something like that.
Well, and actually I admit I'm not a big phone freak. I've learned a whole lot from the guys in
the forums, all of them in dual parallel and blackgrass and all those guys, but I am not a phone
freak, but I do know that a lot of our listeners will be able to identify and tell you,
I can't tell you what model phone this is that you use. I don't know if you use,
did you go to a phone booth and use it as a reference so that you drew it to make it
match a certain type of pay phone because there are guys, there are phone freaks out there that
can tell you, oh, the phone that you drew in this picture, what didn't come in to play until 1994
or something. So you may still get caught, it's just I didn't get you on that one. I don't know what
phone you use. Did you go to a pay phone for reference? No, I'm just using Google image search,
man. It's like a cartoonist's best friend when it comes to that sort of thing, but I'm not going
to point it out, so I should shoot myself in the flip, but there's a phone or two in there
that I really screwed up on and you know, it was only upon refreshing that I'm like,
what year is this story taking place? And I'm like, oh, damn it, I screwed up.
Well, I didn't want to point it out. Some of the phone freaks might. On the front cover,
the one that that that he's looking at the front cover has a rotary dial on it.
Right. Whereas all the rest interior have the touchstones.
Well, see, you pointed it out. Like, the, the, well, not all of them. Yeah, I'm stuck in there when
it has, it has the touchstones and I'm pretty, well, put it this way. If they were around,
that's not what I wanted. You know, I just screwed up, but if you look further,
I do see it into the book like, can you see a paper? They all have the rotary.
Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at the one with the two steves and they are using one of the
paper and it has rotary. That you got me then. Ah, there we go. Well, that's minor though. You can,
that's not necessarily bad. I mean, that's just like my anal retentiveness, but that doesn't,
I don't think that's that's minor. If anything, that just varies the art to make it different.
I mean, that's an artistic choice. That's no big deal either.
I'm the same kind of way though. I'm very analytical and, you know, I've, I, we're sort of
kindred spirits in this way, man, and, and, you know, I try to be a stickler for decals. So,
I consider that little section just like a wad.
All right, so let's see. So as we go throughout the story, now, I don't want to give away the
complete story or anything, but the, the short version as we follow the life of
Kevin, aka, Wayne Sump, throughout his younger years, mostly messing with the phone system,
but there's a lot of other things. There's some dumpster diving in there. There is some
block picking. There's a lot of other things and they're not forced. They're very natural.
There's some other hacker references worth mentioning in here. Like, okay, we mentioned
free cabin earlier, and there's a lot of Midnick references scattered throughout, like some of
the things that he did or allegedly did, et cetera, that our main character here does something
very similar or the exact same thing from some of those stories. He's not Kevin Midnick, but
parts of him are in there. He's, again, an amalgam of lots of different characters.
All right, there's, there's some red boxing on these pay phones. There's quite a few
pay phones in here, so definitely a fitting title for a volume one being freak.
Red boxing, there's a mention of whistling into the phone, and our main character here has
perfect pitch. Now, I don't think Kevin's ever been accused of that, but certainly that comes from
joybubbles, right? That's where that narrates. So it's for our main character, and you don't
specifically say that, but again, hackers who know some of the history, and I don't know that a lot
of them do, would recognize that, and there's one scene where he's reading a magazine, and I think
you do put a little note to say that it's October 1971 Esquire magazine. Now, that is a very obscure
reference. Let me give you big kudos for that. That's a very obscure reference that I don't think,
I think 99% of hackers do not realize, because it's Esquire magazine. What hacker reads Esquire
magazine, but that particular issue, October 1971, of Esquire magazine, had an article on
phone freaking, and it was Captain Crunch and Joy Bubbles, aka Joe and Grecia, and there was an
article about red boxing and phone freaking in general, and stuff, and about those two guys,
mostly, and most people probably don't even realize that. That was 1971,
2600 magazine came about 1984. This is 1971, October 1971, so just to put some perspective
in some date. Look how long ago that was, so that is a very cool reference that you put in there,
and if I can take a moment, I don't want to get corny or have a weird moment of silence or
anything, but, you know, Joy Bubbles, Joe and Grecia just passed away last year, founder of the
Church of eternal childhood. So, Joy Bubbles, you will be missed from the community for sure.
And didn't you tell you had some connection to Joy Bubbles, you get knowledge from up there?
Yeah, I, you know, just with the whole thing where he sort of reverted back to childhood,
or whatever, he was a big fan of his Roger's neighborhood, and his Roger's neighborhood,
was shot here in Pittsburgh. When Mr. Roger's died, Joy Bubbles took a silver mish,
come here in Pittsburgh, because all of the shows are archived at the Pittsburgh Library,
and so he spent days listening to everything he'll show, and then he just traveled back home
to, uh, without the rest of his days. Yeah, he was an interesting character. He's an interesting guy
who loved life so much. He, he would always tell people that he was five years old.
He got to a point in his life, and he said, I'm five years old, and the next year, he's still five
years old. He'd stopped aging. He was just, I'm five years old. I'm going to keep that mindset of
enjoying life and having Joy for life, and he even legally changed his name to Joy Bubbles.
So he wouldn't even his name was a hack, because, uh, I guess in the phone book, they,
they require you to have two names for him to go along with your sub number.
So his name is Joy Bubbles, and that was it. So he was able to, uh, manipulate them in that way,
and, uh, he was also able to, like, if you, if you booked up bubbles, like, if you missed it,
it mistook his name for being his first name, Joy last name, Bubbles.
But you take a look at Bubbles, and it would say, he Joy Bubbles in parentheses,
in his local phone book. Wow, I did not know that. That is awesome.
I know what, there's this, this is great interview. Uh, it's, it's on off the
look where his name was high-rise Joe at the time, and, and, uh, he's just going through a bunch
of trick. You, you really, like, can feel his enthusiasm just coming through the speakers
when he's talking about phones and stuff like that. He, he talks about things like that.
That's good stuff. I, I did not know that. I picked up something new again.
Um, there's also a reference in here to the two Steve's, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,
their side characters in your, and your book here as well. And I like the way that you kind of
mix them into Kevin's story. I word it that way, because it is Kevin's story. Um, mixed them
into it in passing. Like, I have this kind of anonymous run-in, if you will. And actually,
Kevin kind of honed them in this thing. I won't give, I give that away completely, but that was kind
of neat that they just crossed through. Again, I, it's kind of like, um, it, it's a tough tight
rope to walk, to be honest, where you're not making all of these historical figures characters
in your book, where he just like, you know, I think we said it earlier, the forest gump,
where you just have him meet every famous person, and that's the story. That would not be as good,
I don't think. I think it's much better that you incorporated different parts of historical
figures and hacking to your fictional characters. Sometimes it's the main character. Sometimes
it's his friend. Sometimes it's people that just happen to come through his life for a
one small moment in time. This is like the knowledgeable reader would, would pick up that,
that it's Steve Jobs and Wazniak with, you know, sewing blue boxes or whatever, but I never
mentioned them really, uh, using their last names or anything like that. I just,
there's two characters named Steve. And, uh, you know, so it's just, I like to put little things in
there, um, that, that, uh, that people might pick up on and, and feel sort of, uh,
just feel sort of like, you know, they're inside baseball or something like that. We're,
where they're just like, I get this, but you probably don't or something like that.
And it's good too, because if you don't get that reference, it doesn't hurt the story. I mean,
it's two guys that interacts with it. Still further supply. But if you do get some of the,
it's like, like we kind of talked about earlier about your, your friend's name. It's kind of
in jokes, you know, it's inside jokes. So if you get those, you get that much more enjoyment out of
it. But it's certainly, even if you don't get it, you can still read it and it's still further
supply and it still works as a great story. So it's those little in jokes, which are great. And
even in that scene too, it kind of, I kind of felt like there was a little Bernie S in that part,
as far as the selling the red boxes or whatever out of the trunk of the car, selling tone dollars
or red boxes, I think they're out of the trunk. So again, without ruining that little part of the
story, I don't want to go and mess it up. But kind of felt like, again, incorporating another
figure from the ghost of hacker past, I guess. In that exact story, there's the mad hat or looking
character on the phone and he says something like, you know, we have, we have a guy in Philly who
wants to buy three of these blue boxes. Exactly. And the guy that I had in mind was totally Bernie S.
Absolutely. So yeah, you can, and you can, again, it can, it's just relevant enough to pick up the
reference. And that's what makes it great. Don't go in their face. Don't make them recognize it.
You know, those beat, you could have clearly said Steve Jobs and Steve was next suddenly walk past
and you don't just leave it vague enough to make people figure it out. So that's, you didn't
great job at that. I have to say. And I don't want to go, I said, I don't want to ruin every single
hacking reference here. There's a lot of them. And these are just a few examples. There's a couple
of other just kind of general old school references. I don't know if they're exactly hacking or whatever.
Again, I did point out that, you know, the technical reference were accurate to that time frame.
So that was really good. There was like, and this is maybe, you know, me being the old guy here,
I do remember the days where we would do the old coin on a string. In the very first
vending machines and early video games and stuff, you could do that. And it didn't even have to be
a coin in the rare. You could find some of those really cheap, low-end machines, or you could just
put a slug in there. That stuff was obviously fixed very quickly. That didn't last very long,
but it's a great legend or it may even urban legend, if you say, because it was so extremely rare.
But they they caught on to that really quickly, stopping not only the slugs that started checking
for weight and like the ridges along the edge of the quarters and stuff like that. But for the
string itself, they would put the razor blades in there. So you drop your coin in and have a
razor blade that was kind of angled down. So if you try to pull it back up, it would slice the
string and take your course. So they did put stuff to stop that in really quick, but that is
absolutely a great little reference too. And and I got to give you kudos here because you did
stump me. There was a reference in here that I did not get, okay? Until I did I read it in the back
and there were two or three pages at the very end where you do explain some of the references in
case people didn't get them. Not all of them, but quite a few that you explained. And this was one
of them and I had not heard of this or did not get it until I read the notes. It's on page 47.
And you referenced what's called the eight queens puzzle. Oh yeah, and I did not, I had never
heard of that before. I know I know I know how to play chess. I went through in high school,
I played chess and a little bit through college, but I had never heard of the eight queens puzzle.
And it is a chess puzzle, a chessboard thing. And I'll let the listener do their reference
because that's exactly what I did. When I read this book and when I saw that I went out and I
actually looked and I think Wikipedia even had an article on it, but I went out and did some
searching, found out a description. Here's what the eight queens puzzle is. I sat and thought
about it. I didn't have a chessboard handy, but visually I'm counting out squares. I'm like, okay,
well, that's the challenge. So here, here, here, and I actually figured it out in my head the
solution. And then I went back to page 47 in the book and looked and sure enough that's exactly
you have the pieces in the exact position. So that is probably one of my favorite frames. And I'm
going to come back to frames towards the end of this too, but that was very cool because I didn't
get it. And I think there's going to be something for everybody in here. Nobody I think is going to
get all of the references. There's so many of them in here and some of them are so obscure and so
passive in nature that I think there's something in here that everybody's going to look up or hear
or learn for the first time. So kudos to you for that as well. There's lots of social engineering,
also mixed in the book from the bus stop and stamping the transfer of passes, which is something
that we yes, we used to do. I'd never had the the punch method. We'll say again, I don't want to
ruin too much of the story, but that he used, but certainly silly. It's much more simple, but
all you had to do back when I would ride the city bus was have a ticket that was dated in time stamp
from within the last 24 hours. So we would just look for people at a bus stop or look in the trash,
go trashing and pull one out that somebody else threw away who wasn't transferring and walk on
away for our busing chop on there and they didn't know the difference. So that is absolutely a good
example. The pizza example, things like that that's classic old school and can work still today
probably. What else here? Well again, I want to give all the details out. I guess that there's
something in there for everybody all in all to kind of wrap up here because we're over 30 minutes.
All in all and we don't have a time so don't worry about that. We can go for however long we want
to. But I guess as a summary, the things that I want to emphasize on point out is that you had a
lot of accurate depictions and stuff in there. Even when they weren't direct references to people
or events, you did a good job also and this is the most difficult part to me. You actually captured
the essence of and the feeling of it all. And I think let me let me flip open to it. I have a
marked here on my notes page 70. Page 70 is a great example of this. And if you don't mind,
I'd like to actually just read this page on here if I can. Yeah, go ahead. I'm not worried about
that sort of thing. It is our two, our main character and his best friend Winston who again,
Winston ends up being the radio host in the future, you know, who's narrating the whole thing.
But when he was younger was, I guess, best friends. Can we say that with Kevin and the story?
So these two are talking and they're talking about party lines and talking on them and something.
And you really, I wouldn't change a single word in the way you did this. So if I can just read this,
this is from Kevin Fennical Boyntomp. This is him suddenly, I don't know if it's an epiphany or just
suddenly, well, I'll just read it. Basically, he's talking to his friend about party lines and all
of a sudden he comes through with this. He says, you know, Winston, I was thinking about the power
of communications and the puzzle of the phone system. There's so much more to it than just these
party lines. Imagine the technology behind the scenes that keeps the phone system going. I mean,
it's incredible. We take it for granted. People just think you hit a few buttons and boom,
you're magically connected. You know, the average phone call usually bounces through many different
systems that make up the whole network. They keep updating things. I'm sure Blue Boxing will
become obsolete. I can tell what we know about the network is very small. But to better understand
any of things, we can probably come up with some awesome pranks and stuff. I want to figure it out
to the point that I can hear the president fart using the phone system. I think we can make a better
tool out of the phone than anyone can imagine. And I think that really, see it captures a couple
things. First, the fascination and the appreciation. It's a word that hackers don't use a lot,
but they don't realize that they have this appreciation. It's not a word they use, but they
you do. You have an appreciation for technology. And in his speech, you get across not only that
appreciation and fascination with the system, but also the fun aspect of it. So yes, I know it's
not embarrassing at all because it shows that he's not only, he's not like a nerd focused on it
only for the technology aspect. There is certainly that factor in there, but it's also for the fun
aspect and for the challenge. And it's just so many words to describe, I guess, a hackers fascination
with technology that you can't list a bunch of adjectives. I think it works better as an emotional
exposition like that. And I think that little speech right in there was my favorite part of the
whole book. It may be corny. It may be a little bit silly, but it captured the essence of the mind
of a hacker. And I think you nailed it on the head. Thanks. Thanks so much, man. I don't know what to say.
That's that's that's the hey, thank you. That was that made the whole that was my favorite part of
the whole book. Let's see, what else? And yeah, hearing the magic and the wonder in his voice,
talking about the, and this is just volume one for the phone system. I'm sure that's going to
carry over. That's the, again, I'm not a phone freak, but I appreciate that's the way I feel about
the computer system and the interwebs, you know, these tubes carrying all the data out there,
you know, it's like, I don't know. I guess again, it's corny. I know how the interwebs work, you know,
analytically and technically how it works. But sometimes, I mean, everybody listening right now,
humor me with this for a second. Well, yeah, I want you to sit back as you listen to this. And I want
you to just for a second visualize how many people are out there right now connected to everybody else.
I mean, it's just amazing. I just, I know it's so corny, but that blows my fucking mind. I just can't
believe that here we are in an age where anybody is a click away from anybody else.
I mean, the world is instantaneously a smaller place because of the internet. It's very, very easy
to communicate with anybody and I have the same sentiment. Oh, man, you, I mean, you've got
to love technology just after. So yeah, anyway, the, the, the moral there is you captured that
essence very well. You actually, it's very genuine. You capture the innocence and someone who's
genuinely interested in the topic and in learning and thinking outside of the box, which happens.
That's only one example. There were others like that as well. So yeah, I related to that because
that's how I think about a lot of things and it just absolutely kind of spoke to me to be really
corny, I guess. So I thought that was fantastic. My favorite part of the book. One other thing that
kind of stood out to me and you probably laughed at this, but you know, Kevin's school and all,
but homeboy got his ass beat a little bit too much. And he was a bit of a punk. I mean, come on,
now we've all been around the block and a few fights here and there, but this dude got beat down
a few times. I hope he stands up for himself soon. Well, you know, you know what it is. I just
wanted the casual reader to be sort of sympathetic to the character. Yeah. So I wanted to put obstacles
in his way. I see that. I can't see that. That works. I guess that's the main reason why I did it,
but you know what to tell you? The truth is, like, now this might sound corny, but I actually like
like this character as a person. If you could leave with Allison. Right. Yeah. But when I am a
Mazikist, man, and I like to put, I like to screw with them. I just, like, it gives me pleasure to
draw and get in and kick in the nuts. I mean, it has nothing. That has nothing to do with what I
think of hackers or anything like that. It's just like, you know what, man, I think he had it too
good. He passed you pages. Yeah. He's going to get kicked in the balls right now.
Well, and you know what, his, and again, I'm not going to ruin the story, but he's he's got kind
of a rough life anyway. Family life and financial and that kind of stuff. Anyways, not coming from the,
you know, a certain type of background, I guess. So, you know, I think that's something that
people can relate to and appreciate the underdog aspect or the challenging aspect of it.
But again, he still comes up from that and he still has these gifts that make him so much more
than probably most people view the character as, you know. Right. There are anybody that exists
to that little world. Right. Now, now let's talk a little bit about the art style itself.
You have a pretty consistent format throughout the book. Four panels per page.
Is that something you consciously chose to do? Do you like that format for this particular story
or do you like that format in general or do you just think it fit well for this particular
graphic novel? I've done a few different graphic novels so far and what I hope to accomplish
with each one of them. I was almost look different from the other. So this particular story
that I wrote and drew, I wanted it to have the same sort of beat, so to speak, as an old-time
adventure comic strip like Dick Tracy or something like that that would have been in a newspaper.
Right. And those little segments are told and little four panel beats in the same way.
So that's just what I was. That's a very old-school reference. I mean, Dick Tracy,
the phantom stuff like that. That's going way back. Oh yeah. That's where I gained most of my
inspiration artistic wise. The stories are very quaint and how key if you take a look at them now.
But I just think that those people were continent like draft men and they could tell a story
in pictures like nobody else. Well, and you know, when I read it too, what jumped into my mind
is it immediately reminded me. And again, I'm an old guy, so I remember these old comics.
Like the old Arkram, Robert Kram, and not him specifically, but these old 70s keep on trucking
kind of style of artwork. I mean, it seemed very like it was influenced from that. I don't know
if it was consciously or not or if that just is your style. I mean, I don't know if this is good,
bad insult or whatever, but I mean, I think I could pluck you out of the space-time continuum,
drop you into the early 70s and you could publish this book and it would fit in with that style and
that era. So to me, that's a great thing. It's not superheroes with capes and big muscles and
everything. They have their place too. I'm not putting them down, but this today is a very good
feeling of being different than what's out today with some throwback and an homage almost
to those old 70s comics. Thanks a lot, man. You know, I gained a lot of my artistic inspiration
from a lot of those those cartoonists as well, Arkram in particular. I mean, you brought
up this name and I'm not ashamed to say that he had a huge influence because I consider that
guy the best. So, might as well still from the best, man. Yeah, well, and it's not exactly like
his style, but it's certainly reminiscent of it. You can tell there's some influence from that
era and that genre. So that's very cool. I guess here, let's kind of wrap. Well, actually,
there's one other thing I wanted to mention about the art too that you put in, you know how to say
what is it? The devil is in the details. There's a couple of other little things that I thought that
really completely rounded it out that really made it from like an A product to an A plus
product and these are the little polishes that you can put on. Things like when there is a scene
with him at a pay phone, there might be graffiti on the side of it, but for example, I saw one of
the things that was tagged on the side of the phone was the handle Cheshire Catalyst. So there's still
little references. Now, the character didn't say it, the narrator didn't reference it, there was
no reference whatsoever unless you just happen to notice it. And there are quite a few things like that,
things in the background scene, things on signs, stuff like that that you should look for and you
might pick up and recognize. So look for stuff like that as you're reading as well. It adds to the
depth of the whole thing that little bit of shine when it's all said and done. So that was a nice
little touch too. So if you ever wonder, if anybody notices those kind of little things, yes, we do.
Yeah, you know what I appreciate that so much because I sort of created the project
with people like you and my tour in the local and no references and things like that. And I
appreciate not being as soon as these sorts of things, but you know, you feel like I don't know
about you. I'm not going to speak for you, but whenever I see something and I get a reference
that I understand something that I know other people don't, it feels kind of cool, man. I feel like
it's part of the club or something. And I want it to come away with that sort of feeling,
you know, that maybe it's an okay story or something like that, but you know, at least I understood
this a little bit better than the average bear. Well, I think mission accomplished. I think
you nailed it. I think this is absolutely a great purchase. It's worth every dime. People should
definitely go pick this up. Your website, edpiscord.com, edpiscord.com. They can buy this book,
right? $15 is the first, this is the first one out, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm deep in volume two right
now. As you say, I'm not going to, I'm not going to commit you or anything, but you started it.
You don't have a time frame or any kind of things like that to talk about yet, but you have started it.
Oh, absolutely. Okay. And there's going to be, I know where everything's going and it's just a matter
like they call it pencil mileage that I have to do right now. I just have a lot of pencil mileage
ahead of me. Gotcha. Gotcha. This is one and you're working on two of four. I tell the complete
story and the next three books, the next one is at the, it is pretty clear. Excuse me, I suddenly
have the hiccups on the radio and that's got to be awful. The second book, the first book is called
Freak. The second book is called Hacker. And at the end of this book, he's getting his first home
computer so you can see the transition of the story, obviously. Volume three and we won't go into
too much detail. We'll let it speak to themselves. It's going to be called fugitive and volume four is
going to be called innate. So we're going to follow this character and his life and his trials and
tribulations, if you will. And well, that might have been literally actually his trials. But we're
going to follow this character and I got to say there is a bit of connection. I do want to see
what happens to boring thumb. I'm not sure if I can say boring thumb with a straight face ever but
I do want to see how the porn kid turns out because you know, there's a little bit of all of us
in this character. You've captured a little bit of Hacker dumb and this one guy. So the other thing
that I want to mention and you and I haven't like, I brought you on the show but I didn't tell you
any of these questions. I wanted to keep it all in prompt to kind of drop it on you but I am going
to pimp this out. I don't know if you care about this anyway. I'm going to go ahead and pimp it
out because I would love to see people not only by the book, but I noticed. So I'll kind of put
you on the spot here. I did notice that on the last page here, each panel created this individual
five by five illustration on a six by seven piece of Bristol, you do have and will sell people
the artwork from this. And for me, I'm definitely going to get a couple of these and hang in my office.
I'm not going to tell the listeners which one I'm going to wait and make sure I get them first
and get this and frame this and probably hang it here in my in my hat cave here in the
office at home. People can order those now. Do they do that on the website? Should they email you
directly for that? Working out. They should buy emails at the website and they should contact me and
let me know what they're interested in and what they would like to purchase or whatever and all
that, you know, the reason I'm selling this is just sort of like I said, there's a lot of
pencil mileage ahead on the rest of the volumes of these. And I just needed as much time as
possible to produce this stuff. And, you know, the print costs of this first volume sort of need
to be taken care of. I don't expect to be out of the rent anytime soon. I know that feeling.
So that will just help with the cost of production and things. That's good. That's good. It's
well worth it and people can contact you directly. You want to give a ballpark number or something
in case people think this is going to be cost too much for them or whatever. Sometimes.
Well, it definitely depends on like level of detail and how cool I think something is.
Right, sure. But there were certain ones that I sold for first lowest at $15. But obviously you're
not going to get a panel that has like eight characters or doing cool things for something like
that. And then the prices are based on like level of detail. Now, now that's just a curiosity
question. A, two-quart question, if you will. A, how long did it take you to draw this entire
thing start to finish and B, how long did it take you to draw one, let's say, medium complexity panel?
The whole, the whole book took me about a year. But that's not to say that I worked on it constantly
because that's just not true. I worked on, I drew a whole another book in between, in between
this book. So I got a whole bunch of this book done. I drew a whole another book sort of just
keep my head above water. And when I finished that project, I finished working on this book.
It took about a year, took some like around one Christmas to the next. And then the second
second question, how long did it take to do an average panel? I'd say about two and a half to
three hours. Wow. Yeah, I'm just, I'm very slow and I just really have to take my time.
Right. Well, I mean, you know, I think you and I were talking earlier too before we started
the show that you do take pride in the detail and you try not to make mistakes or if you do,
you'll redo it or fix it to make it right instead of pushing it out. I mean, you, you're
satisfied with every one of the pages and panels in this. Yeah, I have a, there's a pride factor.
So you can call it that complex? Yeah, there's a pride. I mean, you have a pride for this. You're,
you know, you take pride in that and that's definitely to be commended. So I don't think is anything,
I mean, please, well, means if you find a person in it, in it's each individual panel, let's point
that out. So if you do, if you already have the book, thank you for the purchase. Obviously,
I'll speak on your behalf there, but if you do want to purchase one of the individual frames
itself, it's not the entire page. It's, if you find one you like, you will say, give me, you
know, I'm interested in page number 28 panel number three, because each one of these individual
panels is what's on that five by five or actually six by seven sheet, but it's a five by five
graphic. So the page and the panel and then you'll get back to them with more details and
whatever, but, you know, for the level of detail and for an original piece like this, I think,
you know, people should be jumping out of the sheet if they can get, you know, a good panel for,
you know, 25 to 50 bucks easily, you know, I think they should be glad to pay for that and a lot more,
especially like you said, it's the level of detail is going to be a factor in there. There may be more
than that, but I think that would be great and help fund, you know, the next issue of the book and
get that printed and everything and, you know, I hate, I don't, I don't want to drop a negative
thing on you here, but I hope you end up breaking even at least when it's all said and done to get
the whole series out start to finish. I know, I do, I can't appreciate what a commitment it is to
come out of pocket to fund this kind of stuff and I have literally been there and I know exactly
what you have to shell out and, you know, be happy to break even when it gets to a certain point.
I would love to see you do a whole lot more than break even, so please buy some of the art.
Again, I'm pimping you out. You're not doing it. Don't worry, I'm pimping it for you because I
really do want people to buy some of this stuff. Great little thing to have hanging in your office.
So again, edpiscore.com, EDPISKOR.com, and any of your other work as well. And we were talking
about this because it's obviously related to hacking technology, something our audience will appreciate.
But check out some of the other stuff that you've got there as well.
Ed, thank you for being on the show. I appreciate your time. Anything that we didn't cover that you
wanted to mention, the website, of course, some of your other work people might be interested in.
Anything else that I didn't cover?
You know what, just off the bat thinking about it. I just want to let people know the
grab the book so far that if they send me an email with the word handle in the subject one,
and they let me know what their screen name or handle is. I'm going to do whatever I can to get
that into a volume two. So they might turn up as a character or they'll certainly be referred to
in some way. The name might be scrolled on a wall graffiti style. Yeah, graffiti on the
pay phone. That'd be awesome. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Go for me as well. Am I going to be in there?
What's that? Is that go for me as well? Do I get in there?
Oh, there'll be. There'll be a big stank dog somewhere in there.
Well, a dog will wander by on one of the panels with a little with a little fume stinky fumes coming
up. I don't know if there's something.
All right, man. One of the things where
Mike, I want to give a shout out to anybody who grabs the book and is supporting it and
making it possible to do volume two. So anybody that grabbed it,
talks me an email. If you want your name to be included, I could understand
how people are proprietary over the privacy. And of course I won't do it without being asked.
But you know, get in touch with me and do that. I'll be happy to include your names
somehow because for anybody that grabs it. Yeah. See, that's awesome. I mean, that's
you know, it's it's not it's part of the community. You know, this is actually, you know,
showing that it's not something that was written by an outsider. It encompasses and includes
the community. And it's the I think that's really a cool gesture on your part. I think that's
pretty awesome. So I want you to pick. Why don't you pick the email address before we go?
The email address is Winpy Rutherford at Gmail. W-I-M-P-Y or U-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D at Gmail. And it's
easy to get to if you just go to my website. And the website is at piscord.com.
You can never say it too many times. We're going to pimp. I'm going to pimp that
get this thing out there. I want people buying this man. I'm really excited about this. I think
it's really cool project. So I appreciate spreading the word. And I have a big chunk of the story
online at the site too. So if people are just like on the fence about it, think you can't get
it out and decide if they want that they wouldn't support the print version or not. Yeah, that is
I'm glad that is a great thing to mention. Yeah, I forgot all about saying that. Absolutely,
some samples and stuff they can look out there. So that's awesome. All right. So they can
they can see probably all the other references that you talked about because you didn't run the
story because it's already out there, man. Some of it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going
to do it. Thank you once again for being on the show ed. And hey, if we we do make it to a conference
somewhere, actually, these I think these would sell like hotcakes at one of the conferences. Take
these to Defcon in July. I think it is or August or whenever it is this year. Something like that.
If I have a table or something, I'll gladly give you space. Or if we can work you in somewhere.
We'll see what we can do to make this happen. And we'll talk offline about some other projects.
But thank you for being on the show. That's going to do it for this episode of Hacker Public
Radio. So everybody tune in tomorrow for another episode. Unless it's Friday, then I guess
there probably won't be one till Monday. But tune in for another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net.
So head on over to caro.at for all your hosting.

63
hpr_transcripts/hpr0019.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
Episode: 19
Title: HPR0019: SILC
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0019/hpr0019.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:19:54
---
Now what's we gonna do?
I'm going to talk about secure internet live conferencing and Wikipedia defines silk as
silk is a network protocol which provides secure synchronous conferencing services over
the internet.
If it puts simply, it's basically equated to a very, very securely implemented version
of IRC and it also includes a lot of the features of jabber and instant messenger.
As all the regular stuff like group chat and instant messages and file transfers but it
also has extras like audio and video streaming, silk server networking and complete encryption
of all communications.
And silk is entirely impossible to send plain text around encrypted messages.
What this means is that server to server, client to server and client to client communications
are all encrypted with the logarithm that is offered by the server that they are on and
the encryption keys that are pre-generated by the clients and the server administrators.
It is entirely impossible to turn off the security features of silk and it is entirely
impossible to connect with that encryption key or even start your server without an encryption key.
In silk, there is a network topology that is basically like this. If you install your own
silk server, you need to first create what they call a silk router and under that you create your
server. And what the router does is it allows other silk servers to route their traffic to your server.
And all those external silk servers are connected to their own silk routers that are
connected to other servers and then on and then on. And if you wanted to, you could probably connect
every silk server on the internet to one giant network. And the benefit of this network
topology is that you can increase the amount of communications being sent and you will not lose
scalability or bog down any specific single server. And this decentralizes the entire network.
And if one server goes down, you can still connect to another server provided that is actually
being routed to by another server. So you're providing security over the silk protocol as well
as a security of actually where each server actually is. So I've been running my own silk server
in standalone mode for the past three weeks. And it uses less system resources in IRC or
Java servers. But I don't like it that there aren't any chat services like the ones used in IRC.
The other thing I notice is that silk does not have a lot of different clients available.
But if you're using a GUI, you can use Pigeon and the silk plugin that is available. And the
silk project offers a command line client that is officially supported. And it's basically just
IRC plus the silk plugin. Both of them work flawlessly. Aside from the clients and the silk
server itself, there is also a toolkit available that you can download and program anything
you can think of that will interface with the silk protocol. You can program for your silk client
or a plugin or you can program more functionality into the silk server. You can program network
services and server services. You just have to know a little bit of seed programming and how to
use a compiler. The silk toolkit is a software development toolkit and it provides full protocol
implementation for application developers to make new silk clients. It allows people to integrate
their own services into their own silk servers or provide a API to program
more functionality into their own silk clients that are already made and released.
So what they can do is create more plugins like the one for Pigeon but with more functionality.
The silk toolkit can be used for the GUI and for the command line and it supports multi-threaded
applications. It's pretty much very useful especially since there's not many services available
for silk servers. I'm using it to make a bot which also has a lot of functionality that is
provided as is in IRC for channel services and such and it's going to help to manage my own server.
If you're interested in finding out more about silk you can go to the silknet.org website which
is a silk project site and you can download their client or the Pigeon plugin. You can also download
the server source and the toolkit source. You can check out what servers are available to connect
to on the silk network. There's an entire community and the thing that I like the most was that they
had quite a bit of documentation on software manuals, white papers, specifications, all the protocol
and if you have any other questions you can check their frequently asked questions on the silk
net.org site. If you'd like to play with silk but you don't really want to connect to one of
the official servers you can check out the link to my website in the show notes and connect to my
silk server. There's probably nobody on it but you can still check out silk and if you want to
read out more about what silk is there's a Wikipedia entry put into the show notes as well
and that's pretty much all I got. Thanks.

138
hpr_transcripts/hpr0020.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
Episode: 20
Title: HPR0020: lighttpd
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0020/hpr0020.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:20:46
---
Music
Okay, hey everybody, this is Chess Griffin from the Linux reality podcast.
This is my first hacker public radio episode, so it's good to be here.
I think it's awesome that this show is up and running and there's been some really great
episodes so far, so hopefully my little contribution will fit right in.
What I wanted to talk about in this episode was the Lighty web server.
Lighty is a web server just like Apache, I think most of us have probably used Apache at least.
Those of us that have used Linux or BSD or something, Apache being the A in Lamp for Linux
Apache, my SQL and PHP.
Apache is certainly probably one of the most well-known and probably the most popular web server.
That's out there, I've used Apache at run several of my sites, it's great, I mean you can't
go wrong with Apache, but Lighty is another web server and I've been using it lately on some
smaller sites and I really like it and so I wanted to kind of talk about it and just let people
know about it and maybe people will check it out and try it.
It's been around for several years.
Lighty is spelled L-I-G-H-T-T-P-D and so they pronounce it Lighty and it's a much smaller piece
of software.
I don't remember the exact size of the source tarball for Apache.
I feel like it's somewhere five, six megabytes, something like that, but Lighty is less than
a meg.
I think I just downloaded it recently, I think it was about 800 kilobytes, so it's pretty
small and it compiles very quickly and of course most Linux distributions and the VSDs all
have a port or package for Lighty, so it's pretty easy to install and even if you need
to compile it from source it's a simple install, it's just a typical .configure make-make install.
But what I like about Lighty is that it's very small, it's very light, I guess that's
where the name comes from.
It's super fast and they tout it as being really ultra secure.
Now I'm not a security expert, I don't audit code, so I can't really speak to whether
or not Lighty is more or less secure than Apache.
But from an end user's perspective or from assist admins perspective, what I like about
Lighty is again just how simple it is to get going and to install.
Lighty has a single configuration file and that's kind of the main thing I wanted to talk
about, the old Apache, Apache 1.3 series, I seem to recall having a single configuration
file, usually it was HTTP.conf or maybe Apache.conf.
But nowadays there's still a single configuration file, but Apache 2, I think at least from the
way I see it, has become more modular, I mean they've split out different configuration
sections, like if you're going to have virtual hosting you're going to put them in different
sub-directories for sites available and then you're going to create a SIM link and make
it into sites enabled to enable a separate virtual host.
There may be a different file for any of the modules that you need to activate.
It just seems to be a lot more split up, the configuration files and what not for Apache
2.
Lighty though is kind of like the old Apache, Apache 1.3 and that it has a single configuration
file and it's lighty.conf, so it's L-I-G-H-T-T-P-D.conf and usually on most systems I've
seen it exists in slash Etsy slash Lighty, on the BSD's I run free BSD and in there of
course everything's in USR local, so it's USR, it's slash USR slash local slash Etsy slash
Lighty, that's where you'll find the configuration file.
But there's a sample configuration file in the documentation section or folder of the
tarball, just the base tarball that you can download from the Lighty website, so you can
see what the configuration file looks like and it's pretty short, I mean I printed it
out and it's only like four pages long, four or five pages long and it's really well
commented.
That's what's nice about this configuration file, as is Apache's configuration file of
course, but basically the way this works is the configuration file, I mean it's broken
up into sections and the first section, the first 30 lines or so are just different modules
that you can enable, like ALIS or redirect or the user directory module, if you want
to have a user directory in each user's home, there's a CGI, fast CGI, there's all different
kinds of modules, the rewrite module if you need to rewrite URLs, you can enable that.
And all that you need to do to enable these mods is just simply uncomment the line and
of course restart Lighty.
Continuing on, there's a single line where you can set the document root for the server,
if it's just going to be a single host, if you're going to do virtual hosting, there's
a different place for that.
But if you have just a single host, it's a one line to set the document root.
Some cool things I like about Lighty in the configuration as opposed to Apache.
Some things are so much easier, like for example, in Apache, if you want to, if you want to set
up, let's say you want to enable directory browsing in some directories and not in other
directories.
Well, in Apache, you may have to create a block in the configuration file for each of the
directories.
And then there's an option in there, I think it's options, I think it's option plus indexes,
I think that might be what it is.
But here in Lighty, so there's, you have to do it on a per directory basis, and of course
you do that here in Lighty as well, but it's much fewer lines and it's much easier.
And you know, when you were first reading an Apache configuration file, if you didn't
know what options plus indexes was, you may not know that that's the option to configure
directory listings.
But here, the option is, let's see here, I just had it.
I think it's, I think it's server.directorylisting.activate, something like that.
I mean, it's a very, it's a very plain English configuration line.
That's not it exactly.
I can't, I can't actually find, I can't find it while I'm looking at this configuration
file.
But the point is, the options that are available that you can enable or disable, it's,
it's very easy to understand in the Lighty configuration file.
Another example is if you want to password protect certain directories, with, with a
Apache, you know, you can use, use the, the .ht access file, hidden file, and you can
set a .ht password file where you can put in a user and the MD5 some hash of the person's
password.
And you know, I'm sure that most people that have set up Apache, you know, know what I'm
talking about on how to set that up.
And in Lighty, it's similar, but it's great because you can do it all within the configuration
file.
You can, you can, you can turn on the off module for authentication.
And you can set up what the back end is.
You can set up the name of the user file or the group file.
And you can, then you can list the directories that require different, you know, that require
passwords.
So you sort of have like the .ht access information within the Lighty configuration file.
It's the same amount of information for the most part, but it's just nice that not
have to have separate files, you know, for each directory.
You can just put it all in one configuration file.
You can, of course, break some of this out.
You can have separate, you can do, you know, do, and includes in the Lighty configuration
file and, and have separate files for different pieces if you want, if you want to make it
modular in other words, but you don't need to.
So you can set up, you know, URL, rewriting, again, instead of having a separate .ht access
file like an Apache, you can do it all within the configuration file.
And it's very simple to set up virtual hosting.
There's a, there's a very well-commented examples, both in the Lighty documentation and
in the configuration file on how to set up virtual hosts.
So you can, you can do that very simply.
So that's, you know, kind of Lighty in the nutshell, it's smaller.
I think it's faster, simpler to configure than Apache.
It may not be as powerful as Apache.
It may be more powerful.
I don't really, you know, I don't really know people benchmark stuff.
I know there were some benchmarking done, done, I think within the last year.
And I think it showed Lighty being, you know, much faster and scalable than Apache.
But, you know, benchmarks are benchmarks.
You never really know how that, how that will, how that really plays out in real life.
Lighty's a nice alternative.
I run it on some personal sites and, and different things and, you know, couldn't be happier.
It's cool, it's fun and something different to play with.
So definitely check it out.
All right.
That'll do it.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
So head on over to CARO.NAT for all of our community.

264
hpr_transcripts/hpr0021.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,264 @@
Episode: 21
Title: HPR0021: The Festival Speech Synthesis System
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0021/hpr0021.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:22:48
---
Hello, this is Hacker Public Radio and my name is Dave and I'll be your host for today.
And I am going to talk about festival today.
Festival is a multilingual, synthetic speech synthesizer package.
It was developed at the Center for Speech Technology Research at the University of Edinburgh
and Carnegie Mellon University, amongst other places, there are a couple of other sites
that probably had something to do with it as well.
And it's licensed under ABSD-style license.
There are other pieces of the puzzle, not just festival gets lumped in in conversations
like this or topics like this.
First box is another suite of tools that make the building of synthetic voices for festival
more systematic and better documented.
And there are, I guess, voice packages that come with festival or that are designed for
festival and those that are additional voices developed by different entities that work
with festival.
To come to mind, the Inbrella Project and the HTS Project, and these can be used as back
ends for festival, although they both of these will require the use of a separate engine
to work.
And then, I guess, walking in with the MIPS, we have some front ends for festival.
Flight, F-L-I-T-E, I think it's how that's spelled, is a small footprint speech synthesis
based on festival, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, and it's built with Festbox.
And then there's some GUI front ends, TK Festival, of course, built with Tickle and Carnival,
which is one I have not used, but the screenshots are really nice.
It is a really nice looking graphical front end for festival.
So that's sort of the family of applications I'm going to be talking about.
Now, most people, when they think of computerized speech synthesis, or think of one of two things,
or one of a couple of our three things, they will think of accessibility in sight, less
computer users, people that need to have screen readers and need to have text read to them
because they can't see it, or they will think of the 1968 Masterpiece 2001 and Hal 9000,
or they will think of, probably some of the things that they thought of that, 1961, IBM
717 series, I don't know what it was, 740 series, computer-saving or daisy bail bicycle
built for two, which was what Hal 9000 sang.
I am not a sightless computer user, but I am one that enjoys having his computer talk
to him. The very first computer I ever bought was a Windows computer, and I bought and
paid for, and my dad bought me a T.S. or 80 when I was an early adolescent, but the early
90s, I bought a PC and it came with Windows 3.0 or 3.1 or something, and that was an application
that would read text, and I just remember thinking that was really funny to him, a computer
-wise voice, say the word banana, that's the end of there, but I find it hard to believe
that I am so unlike most people that I would be alone in enjoying hearing my computer speak
to me. If you are anything like me, you probably have a personal relationship with your computers
anyway. I have been known to have pictures of my computers hanging up on my office at
work, snapshot, so to speak. Anyway, it's something that geeks do, I think, is talk to their
computers, or especially have their computers talk back to them. It's just a, another neat
thing we can do with our computers and a very useful thing too. The reason I started
using festival on a routine basis was because of the podcast I do from my car. I am recording
this from my car. I am recording audio for stuff like this from my car is most convenient
for me, was not convenient about that, is I don't have a computer in front of me, and
so invariably I will forget something. I will have a minimal amount of notes in front
of me and I will leave something out or I will get something wrong. Instead of re-recording
it all or having to record something extra when I get home, I can top something up and
then have a festival translate the text to a way file that I can import an audacity
and include in the podcast. In addition to corrections and stuff, I can pre-prepare for
the podcast. I can pre-prepare the show notes, I can pre-prepare the opening and closing,
that kind of thing, or I can correct something like I said, or making a dendom to the podcast
after I have recorded it. It has been a real time saver for me using a festival. Before
I started doing any kind of podcast, which wasn't that long ago anyway, when I first started
using Linux, I remember there was a program called Say Date, and there is one, say time is
the one I use, say RTI, you made it, you would pop in say time and it would tell you what
time it was, you know, audibly. I remember thinking that was pretty neat. But before
getting into what you can do with festival, other than some of the things I already alluded
to, I guess a question a lot of people would have is how do you install it. What is, it's
really easy to install. It comes with your distribution anyway more than likely. Ubuntu
comes with version 1.4.3. I think there is a beta version, not a beta when you repose
it. I know all for Debian or Ubuntu, but it's version 1.95 or, say, a release counter beta
version of what the festival people are calling version 2, and that's what is available
from source, but as a tall ball. But as far as Debian and Ubuntu go, version 1.4.3 is
what's currently in the repose. And I know for a fact this end, you know, the fedora
repose, and the susur repose, and the mandraic mandraiva, gen2, picture distribution is
there. If it's not, like I said, you can install from source. It's not that big a deal.
But the packages I have installed on Ubuntu laptop are festival. FestLex-CMU. This is
the dictionary file that developed the Carnegie Mellon University. FestLex-PosLex, and that
is a festival lexicon file showing, for part of speech, POS-LEX, part of speech lexicon.
FestBox-KDLP16K is one of two American mail voice packages that you can install. There
are, well, it's one of two different types, and there's different rates, or do you want
it eight kilohertz and one to 16 kilohertz, and for both versions of this. But there's
I think there's a KDLP16K, as well as the KALPC16K, I think. Anyway, those are just the
standard voices, and of course there's voices for lots of languages. There's a multi-lingual
program, so more likely you can find your language. I'd be enough out of the most of the
repos, you're only going to get American mail voices, American, or any English or UK mail
voices. I know there's an Italian female voice, but there's not a lot of female voices in
the Debian and Ubuntu repos at least. Anyway, so what can you do with festival? Well,
in a Ubuntu system, and probably a Debian system, both not much unless you add a line
or two to your dot festival RC file and your home directory. This will be in the show notes
unhesitant to read it, but it's two parent-edical statements that start with parameter dots
set followed by space. The first one is in parentheses parameter dot set space, single
quote audio underscore command space, then followed by end of quotes, the command that you
won't audacity, and excuse me, festival to use, to play the audio. So if you want to
use also, which I recommend doing, if you want to be able to have a music player open
a new special at the same time, you'd put in something like a play, I guess it's also
play, followed by and the appropriate parameters. You can go to the Gentoo Wiki and do a search
for speech D, how to, and you will find the parameters to put in. I will put them in
the show notes so you will know how to get this to work. It's not good radio to read it.
In the second parent-edical statement, it would just be parameter dot set space, single
quote audio method. That's the parameter you've set in the previous parentheses space, single
quote audio underscore command in parentheses, I guess I said. Not the best radio, but as
a very lesser if you want to be able to use festival with also. Now that you got it
working, what can you do with it? You can, for instance, make festival read instant messages
to you from within game. I am not sure if there is a pigeon plugin for this, I'm sure there
is, but it's not in the Ubuntu repos, I know that. There is a game plugin for festival,
it's probably called something like game dash festival, and it is literally a five minute
setup once you install it. You just go into game and you enable the plugin. More or less
it under KDE, there is the K text to speech manager, which includes a little parrot that
sits down in your status bar, system bar, and anything you copy to the clipboard, it
will worry back to you. There is also an app called K say it, and one called K mouth
that I have never played with. Then of course there is the command line, festival. You
type festival, you get presented with a festival prompt where you can set the default voice
or set the speech at the volume and then have it echo back commands or say things. That's
one way to use it, I don't often use it, I'll have it used it that way in years, so I'm
not going to talk about that. But just from the command line, you can pop the output of
a command to festival. The command on switch we'll use for festival is festival space dash
dash TTS, where TTS stands for text to speech. You could echo and then double quote some
clever text, pop festival dash, festival space dash, dash TTS, whatever you put, whatever
clever text you put in the prompt saying that double quotes will get spoken to you or
you heard spoken by festival over your speakers. You can tap a file that way, I think you
need the capital A switch, cat, space dash capital A, file.txt, pop, again festival space dash
dash TTS will read to you the text in the file.txt file. A really useful thing to do,
no most of you have read a man page or two, but if you would like the man page to be read to you,
while you do something else, while you multitask, while you actually listen to the man page,
tell you what to do. You have your fingers at the weight and the indeterminal ready to top what
you hear. For instance, you could top man, space, crime, for instance, pop festival,
space dash dash TTS again. So you can more as pop the, you know, spain command to this,
it's going to input stuff to standard out. You could pop the date command with the appropriate
parameters to have it tell you to date, tell you the date. Not much need to do that when you have
programs like say date or say time. I think the say date program will even tell you your uptime
in addition to the date. So that's pretty handy. What, my hand is pretty neat. What else can you
do? You could create a shortcut if you use a desktop manager that allows you to create desktop
shortcuts. I don't, but if you do, you could create an icon on your desktop and that points to
the festival dash, space dash TTS command and you could drag a text file to it,
conceivably drag an email to it with some tweaking, maybe some an HTML page. I don't know,
some of the stuff I've not tried, but that's the kind of stuff you can do with it. One thing I
have done with festival, other than, there's a time saving device for my podcast, is I took a book,
a book that was in the public domain, a book that was considered to be one of its public domain.
That's literally freeware. The book is called Underground, written by Juliet Drafis. And we
researched by Juliet Sand. I think he works at Harvard. I think, anyway, it's a book about some
hackers in Australia in the, I guess, late 80s, early 90s. And it's a very good book. It's a
true story. It's a documentary style book. And I enjoyed reading it where they made the text of
the book available online in text files and I divided it up into chapters. And I used text to
waive, which is another portion of festival, to create an audio book. I offer every chapter. I
did it in MP3 and I, it was very time consuming. I actually did it on vacation from Dominican
Republic year before last, I think. I would take the text of a chapter and I would use text to waive
and the command off the top of my head for text to waive. I'm thinking it's something like
text to waive. I've forgotten. You can, you can do this with, you know, you could, I can text
to waive dash dash help will tell you, but it is something along the lines of text to waive
in the name of the text file and a dash over output in the name of the waive file that you're
going to create. And then you follow this with a dash e-vail and then inside quotes, double quotes,
inside parentheses, you put the name of the voice you want to use from my, from my podcast and
further reading of the book I use one of the HTS voices, CMU underscore US underscore SLT underscore
Arctic underscore HTS is the voice I used it. Hi, this is voice CMU US SLT Arctic HTS just in case
Dave was an error trying to quote the command that created this audio. Here is the command once again
text to waive my file dot t x t dash o my file dot waive dash e-vail open quote open parentheses
voice underscore CMU underscore US underscore SLT underscore Arctic underscore HTS close parentheses
close double quotes. This is my podcast, but I know it's one, I've named that voice one,
but that's just me, that's not the official name of the voice, but that command I used to
create an audio book from a bunch of text files. This is something that you want to be sort of
careful with that you decide to create an audio book using festival. It's best if you have a book
broken up in the chapters because that's what's going to load the entire text file in the memory
and it's going to create a waive file using that and it's it's not it's going to use that
volume memory if b file is going to be too big. I was lucky to underground is a book that was
right in the chapters. It had been the whole book and I tried to load you know six or 700 pages
worth of text. It would have probably taken up all two gig of RAM on my system. I'm just guessing,
but between just a simple text to speech command on switch and the text away program that comes
with festivals, the sky's the limit is to what you can what you can see doing with this,
especially the text to speech part. I mean you could, there was demo pages on the way up where
you know people have what is that the festival site and some of these other sites where you
can demo some of the voices. There's a dialogue box you type text into you pick up a voice
in the drop down list and you can hear that text spoken in a different voice. That's that's this
PHP. There's I just stumbled upon a site the other day the regular way not using a stumble upon
that that would read books to you. But you could it was I think it would take a book and you could
turn into an audio file that you can think is subscribed to the RSS feed. It's pretty neat
side. I forgot the name of it. But then you could like listen to Project Gutenberg books
translated from text to speech and you could subscribe to that audio file is it with RSS feed
readers so like a podcast that was pretty. But I'm sure they use something like festival,
it's not festival it was a commercial text to speech package. So there's a lot that you can do
with it. One of the questions I get asked a lot is how do you change voices festival comes with
a handful of voices and like I said most of the American voices are male and most people
are probably like me you know they find it somewhat intriguing to have their computer talk
in the first place but if you're married like me there's something
what's the word there's there's there's something really nice about having your computer talk
doing a female voice knowing that you can tell her exactly what to do and she'll do it. She's
a computer but she's telling a female voice it's something that made me no need to do very often
anyway uh for you on how you change voices with it there uh another thing you can do it is I've
never tried this but I imagine it would be pretty easy is uh like the the command line
text-based browser links L-Y-N-X have a dump feature D-U-M-P so you could you could open up a web
page with links using the the dump argument or links space-dump the name of the HTML file and then
redirect that with another the greater than sign to a file so it put us supposed to do is take that
HTML file and translate it to ASCII text which I'm pretty sure festival can handle pretty good
except for maybe some of our non-standard characters so that's the way maybe to convert nine you know
a web page that is in HTML if there's something festival could read to you. I like text-based
weather forecast because they open up better in links and console window and that's something
it could easily be parked and I could have festival read me the weather forecast. There's there's
lots of things you can do with this and pretty sure asterisk has a has an option to use festival
instead of a recorded voice. Speaking of asterisk there is a commercial text-to-speech package for
for this available for Linux that I think asterisk uses and I've forgotten the name of it against
with a C I think and Alison Smith the woman that does the voices for asterisk she she isn't in her
voice too. I think it's called a diaphone I mean she said she they've set the size for voice so
as her voice synthesizes it is a computer like voice it sounds like her that you can use with this
commercial package and then I've forgotten the name of it. Sorry for the interruption what
Dave is struggling to remember is the commercial text-to-speech system called Kepp Stryl CEP S-T-R-A-L.
But there's two or three commercial alternatives too festival and not I'm a really expensive there's
I guess there's T.T.Santh which used to be IBM text-to-speech she used to be via voice
by around $40 there's there's a couple more than I don't think that I want to remember but
they're in between the $29 dollar price range as well but that was tangent through me off oh yeah
the before I get that change of voices there's other things you can envision doing with sad and
alt friends and she you know you could remove non-standard characters using sad or you could
take the output of a log file this is this you can't use an alt in this print you know like
one column of it you know if you want to know who was online you could you could use alt to figure
that out have it really to you so that's pretty neat but like I said one of the main questions I
get frequently is how do you get the voice of what this is my podcast called in which is this the
CMU US SLT Arctic HTS file for voice and let's CMU underscore US underscore SLT underscore Arctic
underscore HTS and this Arctic clock is in Tundra this voice file is can be found at HTS.SP.NITEC.AC.JP
one sure at that web page you want to look for the release archive because what's on their main
page are voice files for the latest version of our assets I keep saying on that if the latest
version is vessel which is version 2.0 beta or 1.95 what comes with most distributions I think is
1.43 so you've got to release archive at that web page and you'll find the CMU US SLT Arctic HTS
file and the SLT file is the US female voice there's there's another one but that's that's the one
I think sounds the best and it's about a two-meg download and it will include the the HTS
engine that you'll need to run this voice as well as the voice files themselves and
and installing this it isn't that easy it's not it's not hard it's not hard right which
of you download the tarball and if you're unzip it or untaught and look at it you'll see
that there's a I forget the directory structure up top of my head but with down a couple of levels
and you got like a it may be ball slash we have slash CMU underscore US underscore SLT
underscore Arctic underscore HTS so it won't be the top level directory but the first two levels
will be empty but like three levels down or so at least two levels now you'll see that directory
then the CMU blah blah blah that one is the one that you will want to copy if you have
festival installed into I think it's user user share festival voices English so that's user
slash user slash share slash special slash voices slash English that's where you'll want to put
that directory once you do that you'll be able to using text to wave select that voice with the
the command line switch that's evalving in parentheses the name of that voice in parentheses
and that may have to be in quotes I mean of course forgive me but that that's how you do that
I think what maybe makes that voice sound better is the way that it's built it's built with
it's built with a different engine in it's built with what is called HMM which stands for
hidden Markov model in its a statistical method that's I've read is like the simplest
form of a dynamic Bayesian system but it's a statistical system where I won't try to explain
it because I'm not completely up on it but it's it's often used in creating voice files but it's
particularly good at the calls that the hidden part of it you know there's there's inputs or
outputs for you but they're called that can change to get you not aware of which one I can't
explain it like I said I'm in the car you need to spend a while since I face statistics and my
wife is gone hey uh I have to give the name of this road it's road to chase live on in the
premises yeah no okay okay okay okay
invably happens when you record audio in a car on your way home from work is your wife calls you
and I sort of forgotten where I was but yeah that the hidden Markov model it's I don't know
if it's superior or not but I know this SLT voice this uh this sounds really good and again you can
find that it HTS.S.P. and I take that AC.JP I think and I take is like the Nagio
Nagio Institute of Technology is a college in Japan evidently anyway uh I guess something I
got left to say is using that voice using that uh CMU US SLT Arctic HTS voice using text the
wave I get and you know I get the result I won and I get an audio file that's been translated
front text but I also get a sub file in a cordon every time I don't know why I'm not investigated
uh it's that the cordon is clean up accuracy after down I had that I'm not accumulating a bunch of
no don'ts and wasting this space or anything and it's not doing any any damage at all it's
still creating my file for me and everything works so I guess your mileage may vary anyway I am
I've rambled on long enough and that's going to wrap it up for this episode of HPR much I have a good day
hello this is voice CMU US BBL Arctic HTS hello this is voice US one I'm roll they forgot
dimension but I'm roll engine binary and voice files can be found at the follow in url tcts.fbms.c.v
dot v slash synthesis slash mvrl dot html
hello I am the default festival voice thanks for downloading hacker public radio have a nice day
thank you for listening to hacker public radio
hpr is mastered by caro.net so head on over to clr.o.nc for all of those of you

47
hpr_transcripts/hpr0022.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
Episode: 22
Title: HPR0022: Chunk Parsing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0022/hpr0022.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:23:11
---
...
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Higher Public Radio. I am your host
of Flexi and I'll be talking about parsing, specifically about chunk parsing. I will
describe the classical chunk parsing, then I will tell you about modification suggested
to make it more efficient. Chunk parsing is also called partial parsing. It's a robust
parsing strategy proposed for natural language processing. An example of a chunk sentence
is, I like foreign languages, where I like is taken as a chunk and foreign languages
as the second chunk. The chunking corresponds to the phonology of the sentence. A chunk
edge is created when there is a pause and there is one major stress-burst chunk. The stress
pattern and pause pattern of spoken language is called prosody.
Fantastically, a chunk contains one head or content word, like a verb or noun, and function
words surrounding it. The form of chunks follows given fixed templates. Their relationship
between chunks is not templated, but are more governed by lexical interactions. Chunks
can move around each other as a whole, but items within a chunk cannot move within the
chunk. The chunking process is made of two main tasks. The first is segmentation, and
segmentation tokens are identified, and chunks are created based on the criteria described
earlier for the chunks. Then there's the second main task, which is labeling. Labeling
identifies the types of the words. Then the types of the chunks, such as noun phrase,
etc. A chunk parser groups related tokens into chunks. Then combines the chunks with
the dominant tokens, forming a two-level tree that covers the whole sentence. This tree
is called chunk structure. Chunking rules are applied in turn until all, until all the
rules are done with. The resulting structure is returned. When a chunking rule is applied
to a hypothesis, it only creates new chunks that don't overlap with any previous ones.
So if we apply two non-identical rules in reverse order, we get two different results. There
are then rules for chunking, rules for unchunking, rules for merging, for splitting, etc. So as
I said earlier, chunk parsing is also called partial parsing. What's the difference between
chunk parsing and full parsing? Well, each one has its benefits and its downsides. Full
parsing is a polynomial of degree three, whereas chunk parsing is a linear algorithm. Chunk
parsing has a hierarchy of limited depth, whereas full parsing doesn't. But chunk parsing
is not as awesome as it sounds, because it can have less than perfect results. Two researchers
from Tokyo suggested an alteration to chunk parsing to make it more efficient. They suggested
using a classical sliding window technique instead of tagging to consider all subsequences
rather than avoid overlapping completely. They also suggested using a machine learning
algorithm to filter sequences that are in a context free grammar. They suggested using
a maximum entropy classifier for filtering. For more detail, look at that paper. It's
one of the links in the show notes. That's all for tonight. Thank you for listening. This
was Plexi with Hackebubli Gradio.
Thank you for listening to Hackebubli Gradio. HPR is sponsored by tarot.net. So head on
over to C-A-R-O dot-E-C for all of the team.
Thank you very much.

122
hpr_transcripts/hpr0023.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
Episode: 23
Title: HPR0023: Software Review: K e e P a s s
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0023/hpr0023.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:23:57
---
What's your name, ringing?
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. I am Stank Dog with you on this short edition
of HPR today. We're going to be doing a little software review of a handy little application
that I've been using recently called KeyPass. That's K-E-E-P-A-S-S. You can find out a little bit
more about it on your own and download it at keypass.info. That's K-E-E-P-A-S-S.info. What this application
is, as you may have guessed from the name, a piece of software that you can use to store all of your
accounts, user names, passwords, and notes or other information, server names, things like that.
All in one convenient location. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, I already do that. I store
that information in Excel or noted a TXT file or something like that. But the problem with those
is sure they get the job done as far as storing passwords, but they're not really the most
reliable and safe way to store data because it's keeping things in plain text. So even if you
are to attach a password file or attach a password and lock up your Excel S file, for example, it's
still not the greatest algorithm in the world and can be cracked. That's where one of the first
features of KeyPass stands out for me. All of the information is stored into one database.
One database contains all that information and that database is encrypted. That's the nature of
what the software does. So it's going to completely encrypt using a ES 256-bit cryptography
protecting the database itself, which means not just your passwords, but even the user names
and even the site names, every single bit of data is stored in a highly encrypted database.
That's the first thing. Secondly, inside of that database, the passwords are actually hashed.
So they're hashed with a, excuse me, I guess maybe I should clarify here, the password is
hashed with a 256-bit key, and then the actual database itself is encrypted as well. So
you have two things in there happening to protect data once you've opened the application,
and then you have something in case, something that encrypts the entire database in case you were
to, for example, lose that file or somebody were to somehow get access to your computer or
remotely hack into your computer and get the file, the database file itself is encrypted.
So they wouldn't be able to do too much with it with such a high encryption algorithm,
such an advanced encryption algorithm on it. It's going to be difficult for them to crack it,
even if they were to get their hands on it. So that's something very important and actually
very good for even business use. Now I'm using this personally at home, but I also use this
for my job where I have a lot of application or a lot of servers, I guess I should say,
with lots of different use names and passwords. So I've begun storing a lot of that information into
this, a lot of those accounts in this application I should say. So very cool, very interesting
application. The couple other things that it does that are worth mentioning is
all of this is stored into the database file and sure the database is encrypted and all that,
but how do you, as a user, get into it? Well, the entire database is encrypted and you can gain
access to your database one of two ways. Well, one of three ways really. The first and most
obvious way is to put a password on the application itself. Obviously you want to use a strong
password and standard password rules apply here. If you put a crummy password on it and somebody
does get the file and works to just do an old fashioned brute force or guessing of what your
password might be. You know, if you use the word password or any of the traditional things like
that, then not only did they crack into the database and open the file, decrypt the file, but they
also have access to all of your other user names and passwords. So it is a single point of
failure. So you have to notice that and you have to respect that. So you should put a very strong
password in place to protect this. Well, that's where the second thing comes in. The other way you can
also protect this is to actually write a key file and it will generate a random key and you can
store that key file so that you need the key file to access it. So for example, if you were to
install this on a computer machine that you use and store the database on there, it's encrypted,
but only if someone has the key file physically in their possession could they get in and access it.
So if, for example, and just to be hypothetical law enforcement were to get your computer and want
to try to access this database with all your user names and passwords, they would need the key
files to do it. Obviously you don't want to put the key file right on the same computer machine
because then they've got the access to it and therefore anything contained in the database.
So that's where the third thing comes in and the probably the best scenario is to have dual
factor authentication where you have to answer in a known password and be also have that key
file physically available. So this is handy for a couple of ways. Again, the two, I put in
out the weaknesses in the way the other two applications of security fail, but when you combine these
together, you give yourself something interesting. And actually it's very functional in a way,
and let me explain, you can have this installed in multiple locations. You can make the database portable
and carry it around with you on a USB key or and copy it from one system to another and have all
of those in multiple locations in the case you can't get access to another one. Or you can install
the key file, or excuse me, and you can install the key file on a USB key and carry it with you.
That way every computer that you're at, you simply put in the USB key or memory card or whatever
else and have the key with you to open that database. So you can actually install the database
in multiple locations. Just carry that key around with you on your USB key, which is pretty much
the definition of where the word comes from and have access to it. Another thing that you can do
and key pass even offers this on their site, you can download a portable version,
and which does exactly what I described as a Windows installer, but what I use is just the
portable installer and you can install the entire thing onto a key drive and leave the .key file
on the computers and carry the database around with you encrypted and have the .key file
copy that to all the locations where you think you might access it and just put the drive in.
So now you've got the database available, look for the key file on that local drive. So you can do
one of those two ways. So you've got some flexibility there and still type in your password. So
what that does is in any scenario, if you were to lose your USB key or memory card or whatever
storage medium you've used, no one can really do anything with it when they found it because they
don't have the key file and or they don't have the database if they have the key file. So without
them being all together in one place, now that idea of course would be to put all of that on your
USB key, the key file right there with the database so that they have the access. You still got
the password protection, which again like I said if you use a strong password you still have that,
but it's still a bad idea to put all of that together. The best case scenario is to break the key
file up from the encrypted database. Something else that they offer that's kind of cool is that there
this has been ported. I should also point out this is open source software so you can find the
source code, browse it and make sure it is doing what you think is doing, the great thing about
open source of course, or do what other people have done and that is ported. There are actually
versions of key pass for your cell phones, pocket PCs, Windows mobile, six, five, etc, etc.
It's been ported to Linux and Mac OS X. I actually think that's a universal platform independent
version has been ported out of that as well. There's a blackberry version, a palm OS version, etc, etc.
So there's lots of different versions of this, which is great. The main version I guess the most
everybody uses is the Windows installer for obvious reasons, but you could use this in just about
any environment. The other cool thing is you can have multiple user keys which could come in
and you could have multiple people using one application or different key files or different
accounts, etc, etc. It will export. I don't really have the need of that quite frankly. I just
needed one secure place to store all my passwords instead of having them scribbled here or memorized
there, etc. etc. or in different files or emails. Some of these advanced features are not
something that I'll ever see myself using. However, they could come in handy depending on what
your needs are. One of those is that has a lot of great export features. You can export all the
information they use in any password out to different formats from plain old TXT files to XML files,
comma separated value files, etc., etc. and then import them into other applications. So that would
be cool if for some reason you did want to switch software and try something else or convert that
data out into another application or store it in some place else. You're not stuck with your
data stored in a proprietary system and have to type it all over again in a new application.
You can export that data and import it somewhere else and do whatever it is you want to do with it.
So that's pretty cool. Again, I mentioned how portable it is. You can put notes in there to
describe exactly what it goes to help you remember maybe how to use it or what application it is.
There's a field in there to store URL for websites. Navigation is pretty simple. You can put
together a little tree, a traditional tree environment and group things by category. It comes
defaulted with several common ones like internet, email, etc., so you can store email accounts in
one tree and store your internet access accounts to different websites or whatever in another.
But it's customizable. It comes with a bunch of little icons come with it so you can create subgroups
with their own custom icons if that floats your boat and I've actually used that for a few other
things. So all in all, I'd say this is a very good application. Again, if you want to check this out,
you can go to keypass.info. That's k-e-e-p-a-s-s dot-i-n-f-o. Go check it out. Go check out some
the plugins. It does allow your right plug-in support, so that's kind of cool. And again,
it is open source, so that is something we always support here at Hacker Public Radio. Thank you
for listening and we will see you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by caro.net, so head on over to caro.nq for all of us here.

259
hpr_transcripts/hpr0024.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,259 @@
Episode: 24
Title: HPR0024: An interview with Jonathan Bartlett
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0024/hpr0024.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:25:20
---
¶¶
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio, I'll be your host for today Deep Geek.
Today is a very special show for me today because I'm joined today on the phone by Jonathan
Bartlett.
Jonathan is a web developer at New Media in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as being an adjunct
instructor at Tulsa Community College.
He is the author of programming from the ground up.
A Guide to Learning Linux Assembly Language, a book in use at Princeton University as a textbook,
which aims at making good programmers better programmers by giving them a deep appreciation
for how the CPU works.
He is also the author of numerous articles at IBM.com's Developer Works.
Hi John, how you doing?
Doing great thanks for having me or I'm so glad you could join us today.
John in addition to being a web developer and being an instructor, John is also a PS3 hacker.
And I'm always interested in talking to people about exotic hardware.
And so that's why the PS3 is pretty exotic.
It's got an architecture of making the other, I think.
Well, John, perhaps not all of our listeners are real CPU enthusiasts.
Can you tell us a little bit about the differences in architecture between the cell and the
more popular windtell CPUs?
Yeah, as you said, the PS3 has a processor on it called the cell, which was developed
jointly by IBM and Sony.
And historically, each chip processor chip has one core on it.
So each CPU can only execute one stream of code at a time.
It can alternate quickly between streams, so it feels like it's doing multiple tasks at
one.
But really each CPU was only doing one thing at a time.
With multi-threading, there was some sharing where you could have some streams going simultaneously.
But finally, they started building what's called multi-core processors, where you actually have
multiple independent processing units on each chip.
Now Intel does that by simply taking the same chip and replicating it multiple times.
So it's basically the same architecture as if you had multiple independent chips, but
just all put together on the same piece of those.
In the cell, it's different.
It's a multi-core design, but the big difference is that the cell has one kind of supervisor
core, which is basically just a stripped-down power PC chip.
And then eight specialized cores, called synergistic processing units, through this CPU.
And they're actually full cores, but they're different from a typical CPU core, because they're specialized for
computational programming.
And so if you think about, you know, you have the vector processing units like alpha-back,
and MMX, and those sorts of things that you have on traditional processors.
Well, these FPUs are kind of like those, except they can be extended to have a full range of instructions on them.
So they're not piggybacking off of a traditional CPU that actually have the full instruction set.
So anyway, these chips don't have all the capabilities of a full chip, but they're not limited as just a straight vector processor.
And what's that give you is really huge multimedia support, because that's basically what we buy vector processors for.
MMX and alpha-back, it's for doing multimedia processing.
And so these are specialized for that.
So the cell processor has a one primary core, and then it has eight FPUs attached.
And all of them, I believe they all run at 3.4 gigahertz.
So they're screaming fast.
So is it both the power PC part, the stripped down power PC part, and the FPUs are running at that high speed?
Yes.
Okay.
So I mean, so it sounds like what you're telling me.
Like if I board a dual core Intel, you know, the links tunnel would recognize if the access slows immediately, both those cores, right?
But in this case, it won't.
Right.
That's correct, because, you know, for like one X, you have to have each core have to be able to support virtual memory and support preemptive multitasking, and that sort of thing.
So it can switch processes correctly.
These chips are specialized for multimedia.
They don't have all that extra stuff on them.
So basically, they're owned by one processor at the time, and you actually have to write specialized code for each of these cores to run on.
You can't just take a standard out of the box program and compile it for these processes.
You actually have to write special codes to take care of that.
So, let me know just on the side now, if I compare, say, a 3.4 gigahertz cell and a 3.4 gigahertz Pentium or programs, let's say I'm not a specialized seed programmer.
Or is my Linux background going to operate the same speed between those two processor types?
You're probably going to get less speed out of the cell, in that case.
Why would that be?
The prior PC, which ships on it, is actually a little bit stripped down, so it doesn't have all the optimizations that are in a standard prior PC chip.
But as I said, in order to get the 8th synergistic cores working, they have to have specialized codes to run on those.
So, what you wind up with is if you don't have any programs that know how to use your SPUs, then you wind up with just a prior PC that does work as well as most of them.
That's interesting, you know, because a lot of hackers have an extensive knowledge of seed.
So, I mean, it sounds like they could still get some good mileage out of this.
Yeah, especially if you want to do any sort of scientific programming, that's actually where my articles that I wrote for IBM kind of focus on during scientific processes on those specialized processes.
You know what I think of is, as I remember, there was this hacker webpage, and what the guy did was he made a look up of all the hash values that passwords could possibly link to.
Now, if somebody wanted to write a generator table like that really quickly, would he load into the SPUs, a bunch of seed numbers, and then channel them all together,
and actually do eight calculations at a time that way, is that how it would work?
Yeah.
Yeah, basically, yeah, it's kind of interesting because you actually have to explicitly code all memory moves from and to main memory on the cell.
It's unusual to usually just access it directly.
But yeah, I mean, basically, you'd load it in, load it in the code into each of the eight processors, go through it, and calculate all of your hash's simultaneous.
Uh-huh.
That's really amazing.
So it would be a fast computer for a typical desktop user, but it would be even better for a more knowledgeable programmer.
Yeah, if you were at that.
That's amazing.
And also, it's possible that in the future, because it's such a different technology, there's not a whole lot of people developing for at the beginning.
And so it's possible, as time goes on, we'll have more apps to come out that have specialized cell extensions.
You know, you're already seeing that with a bunch of the at-home type apps, like Folding At Home.
I believe Einstein at home is trying to work on a place vision, a cell version, and a bunch of those kind of do-it-at-home scientific apps are working on those.
You know, I wonder if a more mainstream application, such as a spreadsheet, could take advantage of all those SPUs.
You know, because that's a calculation-intensive application, right?
You probably could, I mean, because most spreadsheets aren't really that calculation-intensive.
You know, you've got about, you know, 30, 100, maybe a thousand calculations to do.
The cell really shines, you know, a couple million.
A couple million.
Which is why it's kind of specialized for graphics.
In fact, what I kind of heard from the room though, the room though, is that the first design of the PlayStation 3 is actually going to have two cell processors.
And they were going to be simply, rather than have a graphics processor, they're just going to use the cell in its place.
And the reason that they chunked that design was simply because there's a whole stack of dissolves of work that goes along with making a video card or a video board,
and making all the libraries that go with it.
So they just want to have you with the standard one, rather than trying to build it themselves.
But multi-media processing is really what the cell is built for.
That's amazing.
Yeah, one of the reasons for the architecture is because, you know, Intel has eight core processors now, or is working on them a lot, but I don't think they're out yet.
But the difference is that those runs really hot because each core is a full processor.
But the cell, since each core are these specialized multi-medias, the cell actually runs really cool.
So you don't have to have, like, a grunk-antuan pan sitting on your TV or whatever sort of multi-media device.
So this would really, like, advance, like, you know, a media company or an animation company.
Well, perhaps a company that needed to run bare wolf clusters, like for the forecasting or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also animation rendering.
I think it would be fantastic.
Do you know, because I've seen pictures in Linux Journal of the render form used by the Shrek movies,
do you never have any actual installations where people have replaced render forms with all cell processors?
I'm not.
And I think the reason is because no one's actually done the development work to move a lot of these rendering platforms to use the cell to protect them.
You know, I heard that Toshiba released a prototype motherboard.
But that no one ever came out with, you know, a regular standardized, consumable-level motherboard centered around the cell.
Is there a reason for that?
And have there been industrial state blade server-style motherboards made with the cell?
Yeah, there's been a lot of blade servers made with the cell.
Yeah.
I think that before the PlayStation 3 came out, most of the people using the cell were on some sort of IBM blades,
or there's not a company making blades that I forget the name right now.
So actually, both, you know, besides the PS3, most cells right now are running in place.
So this could really replace a person looking to change home computers.
They could actually get this.
Get a PS3 and use it as a home computer.
Yeah, you can use it as a regular Linux box.
I actually did that for a while, although I have a really, really crappy TV, so it didn't work out as well as it looked for other people.
Well, you know, I know it comes with a blue right, a PS3.
So I would assume you would need to get, you know, like a HDTV monitor.
Do you want to?
Yeah.
But now, in your case, you don't.
You know, I'm a cheap bastard, you know.
So much, I don't know.
So how do you connect to it then?
Do you connect to it just with the TV set or do you tunnel into it somehow?
No, well, I connect direct to my TV set.
You know, I think Sony engineers would probably be crying in their beer.
They saw the kind of setup I had for it.
Yeah, and if I actually need to, I actually want to see a full desktop.
I usually run an external into it that way.
Yeah, so you'd log in via KVM or something?
Exactly.
So, you know, it's interesting because I heard these game councils are sold
at a slight loss by the big companies who make them, you know,
because they want to get them out in the expect to recoup money on licensing fees
like for the gate individual games.
So I'm wondering if like the actual hardware of the PS3 is actually worth more
than what you have to buy it for.
This probably is.
In some of these several things to try to shave off some diamond off of it,
as opposed to the cells that come on the PS3 instead of having 8th SPU cores
that actually have 7th.
And the reason they did that is that, you know, when you go into manufacturing,
some of your chips will be slightly defective and some of them will be, you know, even more defective.
And so what they did is they basically said we're going to manufacture these
but we're going to only throw out chips if they have 2 defective SPUs.
Well, they keep them, they keep them if they have 1 and if they manage to get all 8,
we'll just disable one of them.
You know, that's an amazing thing.
I just don't know how to respond to that.
You know, because I know that the CPUs are actually made in mass
and that there's a quality assurance and sometimes they know that some can operate a certain speed
and those can't, like I've read that, until they rate the speed of a batch somehow.
But in this case, they're actually rating how many of the SPUs are fully functional.
Exactly.
Amazing.
Yeah, it's interesting what they do in engineering but that's why I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy.
So what kind of Linux do you prefer, John?
I'm generally just, I usually stick with Red Hat just because that's kind of what I grew up on.
Now, I'm a devian guy and I did read that some people got devian Linux up and working.
What are the different Linuxes that are known to work with the PS3?
Well, the main one that they got, the first one they got running on PS3 was yellow dog.
And they've been kind of the stable power CPU vendor for a long time.
But because Sony actually paid them to all the porting work to get yellow dog up and running on the PS3,
which I thought was kind of interesting kind of showing Sony's commitment to Linux on the PS3.
Yeah, you know, that is a lot of commitment from them.
Has any nine Linux operating systems been made to work on this platform?
Perhaps the...
Yeah, I've heard netbfp.
Netbfp?
Yeah, but I've never tried it myself.
Yeah.
So, you know, I know that Macintosh Apple released used to have a power PC computer before they switched to Intel's.
But they've made no attempt.
In fact, that was one thing that I was a bit disappointed at because I thought that would have been a great move for Apple
because their PCs are so heavily multimedia-oriented.
Yeah.
That the cell would have been a natural fit going from power PC to the cell,
because it doesn't require any rewrite of any application code.
But they could have used the SPUs for doing a lot of their quick time graphics processes.
That would have been great.
They probably missed the bottom of this one.
Well, now, a lot of my listeners, a lot of our listeners at Hacker Public Radio are heavily pre-soft for people.
And some of them have said that they've had problems with Sony because they do a lot of patenting and a lot of, you know,
I don't know if close sources are the right word, but it's certainly closed architecture.
Well, how does this wash with you?
As far as hardware goes, I don't have much of a opinion on it one way or another.
I'm a big free software fan myself.
My book I released under the GNU free documentation license.
And I try, at the place I work, we try to, as large parts of the software, we develop as we can try to open source.
But, you know, the main thing that, my main disagreeing with Sony is when they started putting those root kits on,
I think they were putting root kits on CDs or something like that.
Yeah, that was a real tobacco.
Yeah, that went way too far.
But as far as, you know, one of the things that people complain about is that they've walked the graphics processor on the cell.
So that you can't use any of the graphics processors 3D capability.
Yeah, but I did want to ask you about the graphics processor, because I understand it's like a really, I'm correcting if I'm wrong.
That is like a really advanced, I believe in video, but I'm not sure.
And that some people have used the actual video card for photography calculations.
Do you know anything about that?
I'm not familiar with any of that, although I wouldn't be surprised.
There's actually a company called RocketMind, and they have the software development kits that I believe haven't looked at it as closely as I'd like.
It allows you to use a lot of these alternate execution environments such as graphics cards,
SPUs, and that sort of thing fairly easily from within a C++ environment.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone had used that in conjunction with something like RocketMind that makes it pretty easy to write stuff to work on specialized graphics.
But as far as on the PlayStation 3 itself, Sony's walked that card down pretty hard, so you actually can't access it from Linux except through a frame buffer.
So that must have been if anything that people know about that has done, used that technique, that must be very advanced.
Well, I mean, before we wrap things up, John, is there anything I should have asked you?
I think we covered most of the basics, especially for non-programmers.
There's a lot of interesting stuff as well when you get into the actual individual programming on it.
But anyone who's interested in that can also check out my articles on IBM's developer work.
It's kind of interesting the way I got into it is because I actually thought, you know, we were talking about Macs, I actually bought a Mac.
And I was interested in running the programming.
But I was just pointing because I got a laptop in there, 32 bits, and I wanted to do the 64 bit stuff.
And someone told me that this file was a 64 bit RPC processor.
And is it?
And it turns out they actually have a simulator available for the cell.
So before it even came out, I was able to do some practice programming on it via simulator that I did have.
They still produce it.
And it's actually quite an interesting little thing because it literally mimics the hardware exactly.
So it mimics the actual cycle through so you can actually know how many cycles your programming is taking just by running it on a simulator.
That sounds very intense and it also makes me wonder if maybe if somebody actually set this up as a home computer.
If they could maybe run a virtualization environment and be able to run their old favorite Windows apps in that way.
That's very popular.
Yes.
And that's not the kind of sure on all the details I'm talking about.
Well, look, John, I really want to thank you for coming back to public radio because you know I do web searches on this topic.
And it just doesn't seem to be enough interesting information out there.
So I hope this really enlightens the listenership.
Thank you again.
Well thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot-A-T for all of us here.
Thanks for watching.
You

593
hpr_transcripts/hpr0025.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,593 @@
Episode: 25
Title: HPR0025: Social Network Aggregation
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0025/hpr0025.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:26:41
---
music
Good afternoon, evening, morning, day, whatever it is.
This is Peter from the Fresh Ubuntu podcast, and for a bit of a change of pace, I am joined
by my co-host, Harlem.
How are you doing, Harlem?
Great.
How are you doing, Peter?
Things are doing just fine over here on the side, so.
And you?
I cannot complain.
I can't complain.
I could complain, but no one ever listens when I do, so I've stopped.
Right.
So today, we are going to be talking about something not directly Ubuntu related, as
our regular listeners may be expecting.
We are going to talk a little bit today about OpenID and the practical use of OpenID in
social networking.
One of the things that comes up a lot in our podcast is social networks and our Twitter
accounts and things like that, so we're going to tie in a little bit of OpenID with
that.
So the first thing that we want to talk about is OpenID, and exactly what is OpenID.
I'm going to give you just a very, very brief intro to OpenID.
If you want to find out more, there's more info than you can shake a stick at available
at OpenID.net.
So first off, we should cover briefly what OpenID is.
And basically, OpenID, I describe it as a distributed authentication mechanism.
What it lets you do is you have yourself a username and a password, if you will, a login,
with a specific OpenID provider.
Then when you want to log on to another service somewhere else, for instance, email or some
sort of account, you could imagine online banking or anything.
I don't know.
That may not be a great example just yet until people start to trust OpenID a little more.
But the idea is that to log in, you no longer have to remember different user names and
passwords for every site that you've visited, assuming that the site that you're visiting
and trying to log in to supports OpenID.
And that can be your single, you can have an OpenID as your single point of login.
So you only need to log into one place, but you can log into many sites with that single
login.
It's pretty cool.
Now the way it gets kind of confusing in some of the details, so I'm not going to go
into those if you're really, you know, tech savvy and you want to know how OpenID works,
check out OpenID.net and they've got all sorts of information there.
But basically the gist of it is, again, you're going to log in to an OpenID provider's website.
And once you're logged in there and authenticated, you can use that as a proxy login for somebody
else.
Alright, so first thing we want to do is we're going to get ourselves a couple of OpenID
accounts.
Now I have a couple of OpenIDs and I got one through an OpenID provider called idproxy.net.
And I chose them because they had an interesting feature, whereas they use your Yahoo login to
validate your OpenID login.
So I chose them first because when I first went to login, I was following a tutorial and
the example they gave used idproxy.net.
And since I already had a Yahoo account, I said, well, this is pretty cool.
I'll just use that.
Turns out it's a little more complicated than I was expecting.
It adds an extra step and I decided, you know, I'm just not going to do that right now.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get myself a new OpenID.
And this time I'm going to use my id.net.
That's nyid.net.
And Harlem, you got yourself an OpenID.
Where did you get yours?
So, well, I got mine at Vox and there are several reasons why I have that one.
And we do this later on with Twitter feed.
It allows you to work with several types of OpenID and OpenID.net will allow you to use
your WordPress.com name or your Vox name, Technoroddy, for instance, and even AOL.
So you may already have an OpenID, you know, considering if you're using any of these
services already and that is AOL, live-door, live-journal, smug-mug, orange, Technoroddy,
box, or WordPress.com.
So check that first.
Very good point.
Very good point.
I meant to cover on that.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Yeah, if I, for instance, I have an OpenID because I have a WordPress.com account, although
I don't use it for anything right now.
And I also have an AOL instant messenger account.
So both of those can be used as OpenIDs.
But for this purpose, I'm going to assume that you don't already have an OpenID and go
ahead and create an account.
But if you do have an AOL instant messenger account, then you can go ahead and use that,
for instance, as your OpenID.
If you want to find out how to do that, I'll put a link in the show notes to a couple
of examples.
But we're going to sign up and we're going to say, you know, you're starting from scratch,
you don't have an OpenID, where do you go to get one?
And the first place where I started was at OpenID.net and I did a little bit of reading
and I clicked on the link of, how do I get one?
And they listed a bunch of OpenID providers.
And like Harlem said, AOL, Live Journal, Technoroddy, Vox, WordPress, those are all OpenID
providers.
But if you don't have accounts with any of those already, you can use something like
claimid.com or MyID.net or MyOpenID.com.
And we're going to choose MyID.net.
Why?
Because it has the shortest URL in the list.
So that's why I'm choosing that.
That's the only reason.
Less typing.
You know?
Less typing.
There you go.
Of course, I had to mess everything up by choosing a user name of Nikolitis, which is
like longer than MyID.net anyway.
So I just doubled the length.
I could have chosen something shorter.
But anyway.
So I went, yes, we do, we do digress often and early.
But anyway, we're going to OpenID, sorry, MyID.net.
And I'm going to click on the Create My ID link.
So when I'm there, I'm prompted for a user ID, a password.
I confirm my password and my email address.
I punch in, fill in all those fields, agree that I have read the terms of service, which
I strongly encourage I ruin to do, read through those terms of service before you agree
to them, because you never really know what you're agreeing to.
We can read it right now for you.
We could, but that would be boring.
That would just suck.
That would, but anyway.
So once you've got your OpenID, now the question is, what do you do with it?
And we're going to use this as an example.
What we're going to do with our OpenID, in this case, is we are going to use it to aggregate
our social networking information.
Harlan, give me the idea of what that means.
Well, I believe what you're talking about is that if you belong to several social networks,
such as Twitter or Pounds, Haiku or Jaiku, whatever they call it, even dig, you might want
to aggregate all those things into one feed so that they show up into all your feeds.
Is that what you're talking about?
You read my mind.
Wow.
I'm good.
Yeah.
That or you read the email I sent you earlier.
Yeah, that's what it was.
It might have been.
Good email, by the way.
All right.
Hey, thanks.
All right.
So the problem what we have is, Harlan and I, we both have accounts on Facebook, Twitter,
Jaiku, Pounce, right?
We've got all of these and the thing that we find every time we join a new social network
is we've got to recreate all of our friends lists and then we've got to, you know, update
multiple sources and it just becomes a hassle.
Well, one way to fix that is to use the features that are provided by your social networking
tools to keep your stuff in sync.
Now, Twitter will publish its own, all of its information as an RSS feed and that's pretty
handy.
Now, out of the box, by default, Twitter does not provide a method to put stuff in to
your Twitter account.
But there is a third party service called Twitter feed, which will do just that.
So one way we can take our social networking info and aggregate it all into Twitter is
by using Twitter feed.
Now, here's the catch.
To get a Twitter feed account, you need to log in via an open ID.
So that's where we're starting with the open ID.
It's all coming together now.
It's all comes together.
It's like a plan and I love it when a plan comes together.
So what we're going to do in this example is we're going to do our best to aggregate
JICOO information, Pounce, Facebook status updates, Twitter, and what else was there?
That'll probably be enough because we can do it with a few of these.
You can figure out the rest and this example should get you in the right direction.
So first starters, if we're going to use this tool, Twitter thing, you need to have
a Twitter account, right?
And that's really easy to get.
If you want to have a Twitter account, just head on over to Twitter.com.
If you don't know what Twitter is, then you've probably been living in a cave for the last
couple of years.
I recommend you just go to Twitter.com and check it out.
You're probably going to have the first reaction you might have is either going to be, wow,
that's really, really cool or why the heck would I want to be telling people like, you
know, what I'm having for lunch or something to that effect?
That was my first reaction, but then I switched over to the second, you know, oh, and that's
really cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It brings out the first grader in you.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It brings out the first grader in you.
But the thing is, if you don't feel that way, then you probably want to stop listening right
around now, or maybe, you know, about five, ten minutes ago when we started.
Or take your iPod and put it underneath the car and run over it several times.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but anyway.
So we're going to assume that you have a Twitter account and that you know what its username
and password is.
So then we're going to head on over to our, let's see, how about Pounce?
I have a Pounce account, which I want to aggregate into my Twitter feed.
And if I go to Pounce.com slash Nikolitis, in my case, slash public, at the top of that
page, you'll see the little RSS icon.
And it actually links to Pounce.com slash feeds slash public slash Nikolitis, or your username
in this case.
So if I wanted to look at Harlem's feeds, for instance, I can do that by going to Pounce.com
slash feeds slash public slash.
Harlem, what's your username on Pounce?
Fresh Ubuntu.
Fresh Ubuntu.
All right.
So I'm going to punch that in.
And sure enough, I see your public notes.
Now note that this only has your public stuff.
So messages that you just send to your friends and things will not show up here.
But that's the kind of stuff that you want to have if you're going to be pushing it all
over the place.
You don't necessarily want to have your private information going all over the place.
So we need to know where that feed is coming from.
So that's part one, or maybe that's part five at this point.
I've kind of lost track.
But the next part I know is we're going to head on over to twitterfeed.com, and we're
going to sign up for Twitter feed account, all right.
So when you hit twitterfeed.com, you click on the log in or register button.
Now Harlem, do you have a Twitter feed account yet?
I have.
Yes, I do.
You do.
Oh, you beat me to it.
I didn't think you did already.
Well, that's okay.
It's easy to get one if you don't.
That's as simple as putting your open ID into the box there and pressing log in.
You do.
That's exactly it.
So the log in screen, you'll notice for Twitter feed.
The log in screen is not asking you for a username and password.
It's asking for your open ID.
So I'm going to use my existing open ID, which is nickelitis.idproxy.net.
And I'm going to sign in using that.
So here I go, I'm signing in, I punch in the address, hey, look at this.
You're logged in, hooray, and then it redirects me back to Twitter feed.
I get to the log in page from my open ID provider, and I punch in that log in information.
Agree to the terms of service because I've never logged in before.
And then once that's done, I get prompted.
And my open ID provider said, hey, this Twitter feed thing wants to authenticate you.
Do you want to do that?
And I say, yes.
I get redirected back to twitterfeed.com.
And with this, you have logged in as nickelitis.myid.net.
Welcome.
Glad you could make it.
Well, thank you, Twitter feed.
I'm glad to be here.
Are you following along, Harlan?
Is this working for you too?
I am following along.
Yep.
Beautiful.
Welcome to Twitter feed.
I'm going to click on the go to my Twitter feeds or create one link.
Now since I've already gotten an account with these guys, I have a bunch of feeds here.
But we're going to just add one or take one out or whatever and just fiddle around with
this.
And the end goal is here is we're using Twitter to basically be the catch all.
So in my case, Twitter is going to catch all my other updates and stuff, all my other
social networking content.
So the first thing we need to do is we need to create a new Twitter feed.
So if I click on the little plus sign to create a, or next to the plus sign, I click on create
new Twitter feed, I get a new screen.
And it tells me to enter in my Twitter name or password for authentication.
Now this is very important.
You have to understand that we are giving our Twitter login to this company, Twitter
feed, which has nothing to do with Twitter.
There's no real affiliation between these two services, okay?
So you have to understand that by using this service, you are giving some other fairly
close to complete stranger your Twitter login.
So understand that.
I've taken this calculated step.
I understand that I'm giving somebody else my Twitter login.
And I'm trusting that they're not going to abuse it and that they're not going to let
my identity and my Twitter feed fall into someone else's hands.
But that's a very important thing.
You don't want to just, you know, willy-nilly go out giving your user names and passwords.
But in this case, it's a requirement because Twitter doesn't have any other way to import
RSS feeds into your Twitter feed.
So I'm going to punch in my username, my Twitter username, and my Twitter password.
And I'm not going to tell you what those are right now.
The next thing I'm asked for is my RSS feed URL.
Now remember that we were looking at Harlem's Pounce profile.
And what I'm going to do as a test is Harlem, I'm going to take your public Pounce notes
and I'm going to stuff them into my Twitter feed.
So basically what I'm doing is I'm cheating.
I am adding free content to my Twitter feeds without having to do anything.
It's kind of like me getting credit for the work you're doing.
What do you think of that?
Nah, hey, no problem.
Not a problem to me.
Hey, it's open source, right?
Open source, we're over source.
Exactly.
So the RSS feed URL is the next thing it asks for.
So I'm going to add Harlem's feed into mine.
And the address is http colon slash slash pounce.com slash feeds slash public slash fresh Ubuntu.
And I'm going to click the link at the right that says test RSS feed.
And it says feed was parsed successfully.
That's good.
That means that, hey, we've got it and we can read that RSS feed.
Now, Twitter feed gives you an option how often you want to update this.
The default is every hour.
I usually like to crank that down a little bit every 30 minutes.
And it will let you post one, two, three, four, or five updates at a time.
So if Harlem goes in and just starts posting public pounce updates like crazy, I may not
catch them all.
I may only catch up to 10 every hour.
But that's generally sufficient because Harlem doesn't usually post a lot.
So to his pounce public notes, certainly not more than 10 an hour, right?
No, no way.
Maybe.
Yeah, not at all.
10 a month.
Exactly.
So we're good, we're good.
So it asks you then, the next thing is, do you want to include the title and the description
or just the title or just the description?
Now this generally applies to blogs because if you want to include a blog post, it may
have in the RSS fields, it may have a title and a description.
Many times those are the same thing so you don't want to include them both.
Now for a pounce feed, I am going to just put the description only.
And there's also an option to prefix each tweet with a maximum of 20 characters.
So what that is is for instance, when I subscribe to my blog, I prefix everything with the word
blog.
And that tells people who are looking at my Twitter feed that, hey, this is a new blog
post from Peter.
And that way the link that they get will, you know, it can take you right to a blog post
and you kind of know what you're getting in advance.
So that's why I put that there.
There's another option, a little checkbox to include an item link.
And what that does is basically, if you leave that out, it's not going to have a link to
the blog.
So what that would do in this case is I would, if I unchecked it, I would tell people,
hey, I just posted to my blog, but I wouldn't give them a link to it, which is not very
user friendly.
So I'm going to leave that checked.
But in this case, since I'm having Harlem's, you know, Pounce Updates, I'm going to prefix
it with Harlem's Pounce.
And that way everything that we suck in from Harlem's Pounce feed will show up as Harlem's
Pounce.
So people will know that, you know, maybe they'll know they'll get the idea anyway that
Harlem's, this is Harlem's content, not mine.
Once I'm done, I'm going to click the Create button and bam, I have a new feed in my Twitter
feed.
So now all I need to do is I need to have Harlem go ahead and post a public note in Pounce.
You think you can do that for everybody?
Okay.
I'll go to Pounce right now, hold on one second.
Do, do, do, do, we need some music for this section too, you know?
That would be awesome.
You got anything you can recommend?
Maybe something over the Iota promo net or something?
Oh, fine, something.
Okay.
Something right now, I'm going to say hello, Twitter feed.
Now here's the thing.
There could be some delays in this.
Now we don't know for instance how long it takes for a Pounce feed, you know, to, or
a Pounce post to show up in your RSS feed.
We also don't know exactly when Twitter feed is going to be checking the post.
And we also don't know when Twitter might just be down, you know, and not receive the
post.
So there's a lot of variables here.
Obviously, you don't want to be using this for any sort of, you know, mission critical
kind of thing, you know, it's, it's all beta in the spirit of web 2.0.
But it's cool nonetheless.
So now that Harlem has posted it, some time is going to elapse and that message is
going to show up.
Now I got the email notification that you posted, hello, Twitter feed.
But I'm not seeing it in your public notes just yet.
Oh, there it is.
On Twitter.
So I'm going to take long at all.
Not on Twitter, but I see it in your RSS.
Oh, sweet.
So.
So sometime mail apps, we don't really know how long again, it could be up to 30 minutes
before Twitter feed checks your Twitter post or your Pounce feed and sticks it into my
Twitter feed.
So while we're waiting for that, let's move on.
And when are we going to add our blogs into my Twitter feed while we're at it?
Now I happen to know my blogs RSS feed and the way I find that is I just went to my own
blog.
I visited that and I just looked at the RSS links and you can do this with any RSS feed.
Like if you see that little RSS icon, the little thing that looks like little radio waves,
broadcasting, little orange icon, if you just mouse over that, you can see what the URL
is.
And if you right click on it in most platforms or control click on a Mac, you can generally
copy that link to the clipboard and then paste it in.
Now I know that my blogs URL is blog.nicolitis.com slash question mark feed equals RSS2.
So I'm going to go to my blog, I right click on that and I copy it to the clipboard.
Back at my Twitter feed, I'm going to go in and I'm going to click again to create a
new Twitter feed and I'm going to once again enter my Twitter name and password.
And I'm going to paste in the RSS feed URL which again was blog.nicolitis.com, etc, etc.
I'm going to update every hour because I generally don't blog more than once an hour and
I'm going to leave everything else pretty much the same except I'm going to prefix each
tweet with the word blog B-L-O-G.
And that way again, it will tell everybody that hey, I just blogged something and I'm
going to leave the link in there so that people get the idea.
So now I'm capturing Twitter's, sorry, Harlem's Pounces and my blogs into my Twitter feed.
That's all well and good but you know what, I'm probably not going to leave Harlem's stuff
in there.
I'm going to end up and put my own pound stuff.
Now if I wanted to do the same thing with JaiKu, I can.
So I'm going to head on over to my JaiKu account which is nicolitis.jaiKu.com.
Punch that in and I'm just going to look around on that page for some RSS links.
I'm looking, I'm looking and at the bottom of the page I see an RSS link.
It says the latest from Nicolitis parentheses RSS.
So I'm going to right click on that, I'm going to copy that link and I'm going to head
back over to Twitter feed and I'm going to click to create a new Twitter feed.
So I click on that and then now here's the thing, here's the problem though, I just realize
I'm kind of going backwards because if I have my pounces going in to JaiKu and my JaiKu
or my JaiKu is going into Twitter, that means I have to post in two locations.
So I don't really want to do that, do I?
Nope.
No, no, I don't.
Okay, take that back, I'm not going to do that, darn, I'm going to have to edit the heck
out of this thing or not.
Hey, you just post it, I would just post it, see what happens, right?
So more than likely what I think I would rather do in JaiKu is since JaiKu does provide
the ability to subscribe to something, to another feed, I'm going to do that instead.
So if I go to my JaiKu account and I sign in, what I am doing now, a boom, and if I don't
have a JaiKu account, it's easy, you go to JaiKu.com and just click the link to create
yourself an account, it's just like every else, you just need to use your name, your password
that you're going to pick and any of this.
When I go into, I log into my JaiKu account and I click settings, there is an option there
which says web feeds and you can click on manage your web feeds.
Now what you can do is says add more, you can add a blog, add photos, add bookmarks, add
another atom or RSS feed.
The simplest thing is if you know your RSS feed, you just click on that link.
You can add a blog, like if it knows about WordPress or blogger or something, you can use
that link, but those all have RSS feeds anyway, so I'm just going to use that.
So I go ahead and I click on add another RSS feeds and it's saying, you know, add your
present stream, blah, blah, blah, basically it's adding for an RSS street.
I'm going to go back and grab my pounce updates again, copy that URL and paste it into
the page address and then I click find feeds, it looks at it, thanks for a bit and JaiKu
placed a little note on the screen and says it may take a little while to find or fetch
this feed.
Please be patient.
So it thinks and it thinks and it thinks some more and it says, whoa, who turned up
the heat?
Servers are running a bit hot right now, please try again in a couple of minutes.
Yeah, how web 2.0 is that, huh?
So it's not just Twitter that's having problems all the time too.
But as the more I think about it actually, it probably makes more sense for JaiKu to
subscribe to my Twitter, because if I'm going to be using Twitter feed to stuff everything
into that, then I don't want to have to re-subscribe to all those things again with JaiKu
when all I need to do is really subscribe to Twitter.
So if you visualize this, Twitter itself via Twitter feed is like this big funnel and
everything that I can subscribe to, I'm going to subscribe to in Twitter and then JaiKu
is going to be underneath that funnel picking up whatever comes out of Twitter.
Does that make sense?
That does make sense.
Barely.
Just barely though.
Barely.
Just barely makes sense.
So the question is, what is my RSS feed for Twitter?
Well, that's pretty easy.
If I log into my Twitter account, I just go there, and just like in JaiKu, it scroll down
to the bottom of the page, and there's a link right there that says RSS, and I'm just
going to right click on that, copy that link location, and then go back to JaiKu and paste
in the RSS feed.
I'm clicking on find feeds, and then I'm going to wait, and assuming that the JaiKu servers
aren't having a meltdown right now, then you know, I'm going to get some good stuff.
And if they are, well, so much for that idea.
So what we've managed to do is we've created an open, an open ID.
We took our Pounce notifications and a blog, and we were able to use Twitter feed to put
them into our Twitter feed for lack of a better term.
And we then in turn took our Twitter feed and stuff that into our JaiKu feeds.
So in the end, if anybody wants to follow you, basically, regardless of whether they're
following you on Pounce or Twitter or on JaiKu, then they're all going to get the same
stuff.
And we can take this one step further as Harlem, you and I, we both have Facebook accounts,
right?
Right.
Although I don't use mine for much anymore.
Me either.
Yeah.
I was just reading an article in the register this week, which is basically saying that people
are getting bored with social networking.
Yeah.
I read that too.
Thirty something drop in subscribership or traffic and it's happening for everybody.
Yep.
And it happens.
Well, if you want to sync your Twitter stuff, then there's a good little application I've
found on Facebook.
It's called Twitter sync.
If you just look for that under edit or add applications, like Twitter feed, it will ask
for your Twitter name and password.
And the reason, well, basically what they need that for is because they're pulling and
pushing info into and out of your Facebook account.
So I used a couple of other Twitter apps.
This is the best one that I've found.
And the reason I like this one is it goes in both directions.
So I can either update my status in Facebook or I can make a post in Twitter and it goes
both directions.
So that's pretty cool.
It synchronizes your status, basically.
So if I do a Twitter, it shows up in Facebook and if I update my Facebook status, it shows
up as what I'm doing in Twitter.
Sweet.
With that, I think we've pretty much come full circle, don't you think, Alan?
I think so too.
Although you're going to have to play around with this for a little bit because it's, you
can get really caught up in the details.
How is my height to feed, going to get my Twitter feed and what about my pounce?
And so sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and diagram this all out so you don't
get confused.
Absolutely.
And I will post a link in the show notes also.
You can see where I entitled a blog post a while ago.
It was titled, oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice social networking.
And I actually made a little mind map which includes my Twitter feed, my blog, my Google
Reader shared items, my Facebook status updates, my delicious bookmarks, my jikos and my
pounces and I put all those things together.
And you can add anything else, like if you have an RSS feed for your Flickr album when
you post new Flickr updates, you can post that there.
You can do all sorts of things and it's really kind of cool.
If you choose to do so, you can experiment with a lot of other really neat RSS and Web
2 tools out there.
Yahoo Pipes, for instance, is a really great, easy and intuitive, powerful way to manage
multiple RSS feeds.
So you can use that to aggregate things and you can improve, include program logic right
in just with a drag and drop interface.
There's so many cool neat things out there that you can fiddle with.
We can't even begin to cover them all.
But at least today we've exposed you to Open ID, Twitter, Jiku, Pounce, Twitter feeds,
RSS.
I don't know about you, man, but I think my brain is full.
How are you feeling?
Oh, man.
I, again, I have to figure this all out, but at least I got it up and running and I can
play around with it.
I can add stuff to my Twitter feed.
Now this is also, I just wanted to ask you a question.
This is only if you want to get everything on Twitter.
Is that correct?
This doesn't work the other way around.
Twitter?
Well, if you want to put like your Twitter somewhere else?
Yeah, like if you want to Twitter into Pounce, for instance.
No, I don't think Pounce has any way to put anything into it.
Unless things have changed recently.
Let me double-check here.
Well, you probably have to hack their API for that.
Yeah, when I did this, go ahead.
Sorry, when I did this first, this was several months ago.
Pounce did not have any way to import.
It did not have a way to import RSS feeds.
And that's why the tutorial that I originally followed started with Pounce.
So basically, all of your Pounce's Twitters, et cetera, would originate from Pounce.
And that was okay, but after a while, I just, I got kind of tired of the Pounce interface
and I just found Twitters to be easier, more friendly, I don't know why, but I stuck
with Twitter.
Now on Pounce, you do have the option of putting your profiles on your home page on the
right sidebar.
And so you put your Facebook profile, your Twitter profile, even your Skype name and
your blog on the right sidebar.
So, you know, yeah, there's a lot, they, they, yeah, Pounce is aware of like, I don't
know, 20 or so, maybe more different social networks, and they just have all kinds.
But what all that does is that provides you a link.
It doesn't actually, it doesn't, you know, add content from those websites.
Right, exactly.
But it does, you know, it, it takes away, it gives away for you to, you know, give
people another way to contact you.
So, it shows him, but it doesn't actually aggregate all the information that we did.
So, yep, good example now.
So with that, I think we're going to wrap this up.
Just a reminder that every week, Harlem and I, we do the Fresh Ubuntu podcast, Ubuntu
Linux, and Ubuntu Linux centric podcast, where we cover all things Ubuntu and anything,
you know, that's between five or six degrees of separation away from Ubuntu or John
O'Bacon, as the case may be.
That's right.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I can be found at Twitter.com slash Nikolitis.
And my blog is at blog.nicolitis.com.
And if you have a hard time spelling either of those, I don't blame you for a minute.
You can just go to pn72.com and you will find me there.
Harlem, what about you?
And you can find me on my Twitter account at Twitter.com slash Harlem, H-A-R-L-E-M.
Also, I have a, again, Fresh Ubuntu.org, which is our main website for the podcast and
feel free to listen in every now and again, if you wish.
And if you are in Ubuntu, Efficient Auto, or whatever, you can subscribe to the podcast
at feeds.feedburner.com slash Fresh Ubuntu, and that's it.
Until next time, have a great day and remember to hack your world.
That's right.
Bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to Hack Republic Radio.
H-B-R is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all of us in need.
Bye-bye.

184
hpr_transcripts/hpr0026.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,184 @@
Episode: 26
Title: HPR0026: Intro to codecs
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0026/hpr0026.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:26:34
---
MUSIC
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Klaatu. I'm here to talk about
Codex, Video Codex, and Audio Codex alike. This is going to probably end up
being sort of an in-depth series since this is such a huge subject. I want to
instill a little bit of an understanding in you about how Codex work and kind
of what they do and why they exist at all. But I also want to maybe talk
about each or some of the major Codex out there and maybe some of some of the
features of each and why they exist, where they come from, things like that,
whether they're free, non-free, stuff like that. And of course the other side of
I mean the different sides of Codex are the compression and the decompression of
the content. So I'd like to talk a little bit about that. So initially I think
what is a Codex? That's something that a lot of people don't quite understand.
A lot of people know empirically that they need a Codex because when they click
on a file or they go to a site, the video doesn't play and it tells them to
install a Codex or a plug-in for their browser. So a lot of people realize that
there's a need for them to install a Codex. But not many people really know
what a Codex is. The word Codex is actually it's like modem or something like
that. It's not really, you know, we say it as a word, it's actually two words
put together. It's code and decode, CO for code, DEC for decode. And the idea
behind a Codex simply is at least in its most pure form and I'll explain what
I mean by that in a little while. In its most pure form, a Codex simply
exists because video does not originate on your computer. Obviously what we
see in the real world is not digital. Something needs to make them digital. And
this is where Codex come in. So a Codex is simply a mathematical method of
taking a signal and turning it into a digital stream of information. So Codex
are actually at work, hard at work on your camera well before you ever get to
your computer. I mean obviously your digital video cameras are, you know,
obviously they have embedded computers in them. So when you're taking video,
whether it's mini DV or HDV or AVCHD or whatever, the video is being
processed by a codec and it's being stored in a certain format and then
you're transferring that to your computer to either edit it or to store it or
to convert it to DVD or whatever you're going to do without video. So obviously
Codex have to exist. If we want to have video on our computers, the question
is do they have to exist in the way that they exist? And the answer to that is
probably not. Codex are also a big business. There are companies out there that
are in the business of having created a Codex and having come up with a
scheme to make people come to them to be able to use that Codex. It's not always
the end user that needs to go to that company. Sometimes we do in order to
download the Codex especially in Linux where there are very few Codex included
with our operating system. But even, you know, I mean if you've paid for your
operating system, if you've paid for either Windows or Mac OS 10, someone from
one of those two operating systems has gone to these companies, signed a license
agreement, paid whatever amount of money needs to be paid in order to get that
Codex to be bundled with that operating system, and of course you're paying
that eventually when you're paying for the operating system. So there's a
business to Codex and it's a really profitable business. And interestingly enough,
a lot of people believe incorrectly that there are so many Codex out there
because each Codex is designed for a certain use. You know, one Codex must
be better than another for such and such a job, whilst another Codex must be
better than the other one for this job. That's usually not the case. While
certain Codex sometimes do have a kind of specialty or a, you know, maybe they've
been created with the intent to sell it to a certain market. It really is
just, it's usually just that. It's just someone started a company, got some
Codex together, had them make a Codex and geared it toward a certain market
because they see that there's a need for video delivery. So Codex can be really,
really uncompressed. And that's simply, like I say, that's the most pure form of it.
Uncompressed video would just be a really, really, really big file that you'd
need a really nice computer system to be able to even play back to watch. More
typically, what we find in video cameras, especially, for instance, something like
mini-dv or motion JPEG, which you'll find in some of the digital still cameras
that, you know, also have the video camera function. Not the iPhone, of course,
because the iPhone, as advanced as it is, doesn't have that function. But other
cameras, other phones even have little video cameras in them. Motion JPEG. So
that's a very, very compressed picture because obviously if you're taking it on
your phone, it's not as if though you have that much, not that much space on it
to hold, you know, video. So it's very, very compressed. Mini-dv, which is, I guess,
kind of right now it's the lowest consumer video format, is actually quite
compressed as well. And you start to see that when you bring it into different
color correction programs, starting, you know, you try to kind of isolate
certain things. It gets kind of difficult to do that with such compression
because you're losing a lot of color depth and things like that. And then
there's obviously, you know, there's like HDV, which is kind of in between
mini-dv and HD. And that's not quite as compressed, but it's compressed. So you've
got, you know, the codec by nature is to have the video on the computer. And then
there's different kinds of, there's different kinds of compression that those
codecs are applying to that video. And usually that serves a very useful
function. Like I say, if you want to take video on your camera and you don't want
to lug around a big, you know, ridiculously large digital still camera with, you
know, like an eight gig hard drive attached to it or something like a, you
know, I mean, then then you're going to have to compress that video. If you've
got a system that you want to edit video on and your system doesn't have, you
know, 10 processors and eight gigs of RAM and a gig of video RAM, then you're
going to need to compress that video so that your system doesn't totally choke
on the video that you're feeding it and demanding that it plays back to you in
real time so that you can get a feel for it so you can edit it. So the, the
codecs that compress things force a certain amount of, it's a balancing act.
Obviously, the artist part of the person taking the video ideally would not
have to compress the video at all. It would be a, a pure stream of, of basically
exactly what the camera could capture. There would be no compression. It would
just be a perfect image, a digital translation of what we see with our own eyes
basically. Realistically, on a technical side, that's just not going to happen
either because the system that you're running it on isn't going to be able to
handle it or the system that you're delivering it to isn't going to be able to
handle it. So think about internet video delivery. There's no way that you're
going to be able to send someone uncompressed video, you know, when they go
and download your video netcast or your, your movie, your open source movie or
something like that. It's just not going to be possible. You have to compress it
so that they can download it within a reasonable amount of time. But you have to
compress it only so much and you want to obviously leave it looking as good as
possible. And so it gets really, really tricky and there's a certain art and
there's a certain science to compression and it is fairly complicated to
compression. It's something that you really kind of have to get to know, but it
really helps to know what exactly is going on when you're doing the
compression. And that'll help you wrap your mind around how to go about
compressing video. So assuming we've gone out and gotten some video and we come
back and we've edited it or whatever we're going to do with it, we now, we
now need to compress it so that we can send it out to other people so that they
can actually watch it. And whether you're going out to DVD or whether you're
going to offer it as a download over the internet or you're going to compress
it onto a video CD or you're going to put it on your own media player, your
in 800 or something like that, you have to keep in mind your what you're
delivering to because of course it couldn't be that simple. Every different
device needs a different kind of compression method or could benefit from
having its own compression method. The process of encoding video or compressing
video is to take the video in its native codec whatever it was captured in into
the camera and now you're taking it and you're going to transcode it into a
format that is more ideal for whatever delivery method you've chosen. You can
do this on Linux on the command line. I think there are some GUI tools as well.
I usually just do it on the command line. However you do it you you really need
to know what the different what the important variables are because honestly
there are only a couple of a really important variables and if you understand
what they do you'll have you'll have part of what you need to understand how
you're going to go about compressing the video. The interesting thing about
compression is that only half of it is understanding what needs to be done. The
other half is actually looking at the video that you are compressing on a
case-by-case basis and kind of analyzing it with your own eyes and and kind of
processing in your own mind how that video is going to treat or how your
compression method is going to treat that video. So the idea here is that if you
have a video of people blowing up buildings and shooting lasers and
swinging around lightsabers that's going to need a pretty that's a lot of
information happening in that video frame and if you really start thinking about
video frames traditionally I think we all think of it kind of as we know film
is you know as a series of images being shown to us you know a series of
still images being shown to us at 29 or 30 or 24 frames per second and it's
simply the the illusion of motion that we have from seeing all these still
images and while technically it's it's sort of the same thing in video it's
actually a lot more helpful to think of it more like how the computer sees it.
The computer doesn't really see it as a set of still images the computer sees
it as a block of pixels and each of those pixels has a value each pixel has a
Luma value and a Chroma value the Luma value is the brightness or darkness of
that pixel and the Chroma value is the hue the color of that pixel those two
things in each little pixel is what the computer is looking at and then
think about how many pixels there are in even a standard definition frame
typically it's 720 pixels by 480 which is basically more math than I can do in
my head right now but that's a lot of pixels you know it's a lot of pixels for
the computer to think about and that is 720 by 480 approximately 30 times a
second so now you've got even more for the computer to consider so if you think
about your frames of video as just a box of pixels of ever changing pixels you
kind of just analyze the picture on that basis so if you've got people swinging
your own lightsabers you've got pixels that are changing value both Luma and
Chroma value just a lot in one second you know that lightsaber is gonna go
from one end of the string to the next that's a streak of light that that
goes across the frame but then the pixels that it has passed through are going to
go back to their old value after it passes through that area you know so and
then you've got people around in that frame and you've got sparks flying around
and you've got all that kind of stuff going on that's a lot of information and
that that kind of compression you're not going to be able to compress it that
much and be able to retain clarity and you know the high quality of image on the
other hand if you if I was filming myself right now or video taking myself
right now all we would have in the frame was me talking into a microphone and
really nothing else you know there wouldn't be a whole lot of movement I'm
not I'm not really moving around it's just my lips removing and if I even could
seal my lips behind the microphone the video camera wouldn't even see
that much and so it would it would practically be like a still image and so
that's that's a lot of that's a lot of pixels that basically aren't changing
value and that kind of stuff is very easy for the computer to compress and it's
very easy to have a you know to give that kind of frame a very small amount of
what's called bitrate so I've probably given you enough to think about for this
episode I'm going to wrap it up now and I'm gonna do a second episode in which we
will go through what exactly is happening during during compression and what
those important variables to think about are so that you can kind of get a
sense of what you should be thinking about when you set about compressing
video and then probably in the third and probably final episode I will tackle a
couple of different codecs and talk about what they all are and why they
exist and who owns them and what we should do to deal with them
thank you for listening to H.P.R.R. sponsored by caro.net so head on over to
H.P.R.O.N.C. all of us in here

54
hpr_transcripts/hpr0027.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
Episode: 27
Title: HPR0027: How to Record a HPR episode
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0027/hpr0027.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:26:50
---
music
Welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host Enigma and I will be talking today about basically how to record an episode
of Hacker Public Radio.
Yes, yes, I know this has been done before on pretty much every podcast known to man,
however, I'm going to go over it just because Hacker Public Radio is a little bit different
than any other podcast.
As everyone knows, we have a list of hosts, we produce a show every day, however everybody
does it a little bit differently how they record.
I'm going to tell you how I record, not to say this is the correct way, this is just
how I do it to make life easy.
I use a free software called Audacity and basically I have it on both my Windows boxes
and my Linux box.
It can run on Linux Windows and Mac OS X and I use it because it's fairly intuitive and
it's free.
I know other hosts use various software packages but Audacity is easy for me so that's
what I'm going to explain.
When you get into Audacity, I just use everything all the defaults for my shows.
I use Mono 44,100 Hertz as my default bitrate.
I know Stank uses a lower bitrate because it's better quality, however, I just use all
the defaults and my shows come out fairly well.
I can't hear much of a difference but I'm no audio guy so don't take my word for it.
Once I get done recording a show, there are an intro and outro that I'll have in the
show notes that you can download and tag on to your Audacity file by basically going
into my version of Audacity.
I go to Project and then Import Audio.
The newer versions of Audacity have it under the file layout.
I know my new Ubuntu distribution has the newest version of Audacity that they've changed
a few things so I'm going to talk about the older version of Audacity and I'm sure you
can figure it out.
After you import both the outro and the intro, I just basically move my show in between
the two and then basically just go to File and then Export as MP3 and I'm pretty much
done.
The only caveat with Audacity is you have to download the lame library and there's
different, it's different for each distribution.
I just on my Ubuntu box, just go AppGet install lib lame.dev and lib lame I believe.
I have to install those two packages on the OS X and Windows versions.
You can go right to the Audacity page and download the links from there and that's pretty
much it.
Also, you have to add your ID3 tags and the format we use for HackerPublicRadio is we
do HPR and then the number in the title and then dash whatever the show name is and then
artist would obviously be your name and then the album is HPR Season 1.
And then once we go a year we'll Season 2 and so on and so forth.
But other than that, that's pretty much it.
Have a good day and we will see you tomorrow on another episode of HackerPublicRadio.
Thank you for listening to HackerPublicRadio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-T for all of us in the

96
hpr_transcripts/hpr0028.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
Episode: 28
Title: HPR0028: Project Chanology
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0028/hpr0028.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:27:09
---
Hello, this is Luke Zero, your host for today, 2008, February 7th, and today we will be
discussing Project Chanology.
By now you've most likely heard of Project Chanology, which is also referred to as Anonymous
Versus Scientology in a DDoS War.
Now I'll be trying to fill you in on many of the points to the story that are left out
in most reports of the situation.
So far it's been reported mostly that this crazy hacker group is DDoSing the Scientology,
which is a religion or cult depending on which country you live in.
I'm going to explain a little more about each group, because it's not explained well
in many of the news reports I've read, and unless you're looking into this yourself,
you're pretty much unaware.
Now Anonymous, while this group, which is actually more of a collective, is commonly
regarded as an unknown organization of super hacker internet bullies, there's more
to it, actually that statement is quite inaccurate really.
Each Anonymous acts on his or her own and is not responding to anything other than perhaps
a mere suggestion.
On initial form thread postings, there were many Anonymous that deemed the suggestion
of the DDoS pretty stupid, and even those with sympathy towards Scientology.
The idea behind Anonymous grew out of a popular image board, and multiple image boards
at this point on the net, where users are encouraged to post anonymously, when you post
it would pop up as Anonymous, and the only way that you could specify a certain person
is regarding the post number.
Now this caused many to post without care, making it appear as a group of the most politically
incorrect assholes, so to speak.
Of course to some it becomes easy to fall into the bullshit, this goes for any kind of
social clicks, however, if in one of these clicks everyone looks, talks, and appears to
act the same, the opinion of one may easily seem to be the opinion of all.
Now if all of this is added up, it's easy to understand why so many regard Anonymous
as an evil hacker organization, even though what it is is really just a bunch of people
doing their own thing.
Information on Anonymous is scattered.
There should be a few good links if you Google Project Genology, and maybe add stuff like,
I don't know, Epic Win, or I heard you like Mudkips spell like wrong in that part, maybe.
Now Scientology started in the 1950s, Scientology is based on the teachings of the book Dianetics
written by Eloran Hubbard.
Though being heavily biased against psychiatric drugs, psychiatrists, and even medications
altogether, Dianetics contains helpful advice for life in general and can easily be used
as therapy to many.
The church offers communication courses as well as many other classes in order to allow
one to increase their level towards the bridge to total freedom.
It separates the mind as reactive and analytical.
The reactive mind, said to be caused by traumatizing past experiences, is what causes one to
do certain things without good reason.
The analytical mind operates similar to a computer, making decisions and acting based
off of giving information.
Once one frees themselves of all things feeding the reactive mind, they are known as clear.
The church has many critics, due to its unappealing history involving defraud, blackmailing,
murder, and even bugging IRS conference rooms during meetings regarding their tax exempt
status.
They are also frowned upon by many for operating in a bait and switch manner, charging for
their beliefs, and are giving a hard time for the later level beliefs.
Look up the word Xenu for that one, Xenu.
Now of course more information is easily available for Scientology and can be found at Scientology.org,
as well as Xenu.net or XenuTV.com, both of which are critical of the church.
Now the whole project technology thing began about the 16th of January, when there was a
post online by an anonymous stating that we should really deduce the Scientologists
right now.
Other websites, because of course this will stop them, of course it didn't stop them.
However, he went into a little more detail, citing Scientologists' fair game clause, which
is pretty much we can do anything and everything to stop any suppressive person as they call
it or SP.
Now of course a lot of people went along with it, maybe kids, who knows who, they were
all different people acting on their own who decided to listen to this guy and start
dosing them at a specific time.
So that's what happened.
But it did gain a lot of awareness towards what Scientology is, has done, and is currently
doing to stop people in their tracks at trying to decredit the church by any way.
Now what they didn't expect is a bunch of members of that church, possibly, who knows
if they were, who knows if they weren't, to deduce them right back, which started
the whole anonymous versus Scientology War, as some like to call it.
What's happening currently is protests are going to be held the 10th of February to bring
awareness to what the church is doing.
Now this is, whatever anonymous came up with this idea, is a little more level headed
than trying to deduce a website.
But the fact that they saw what was going on and decided to act in a way that made many
others feel the same way, much as the original deduce attack did.
But of course, as hackers, generally we know that it only takes one person to bring down
something with enough resources.
And also we generally don't do this as individual hackers because it just isn't the way to go
about solving anything.
For now we'll just have to wait and see what goes down on the 10th.
Again, this is just another story about the evil hacker and how now they're attacking
religion.
But of course, if you look a little further into the details, that's not the case.
Again, this has been Slick Zero for Hacker Public Radio.
I hope you've learned at least something from my show today.
Have a great day.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-A-C for all of her team.

254
hpr_transcripts/hpr0029.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,254 @@
Episode: 29
Title: HPR0029: Codecs Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0029/hpr0029.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:28:11
---
music
This is Hacker Public Radio, my name is Clat 2.
This is the second episode in an in-depth series on video codecs.
In the last episode we spoke about why codecs exist, which is essentially to translate
analog video or rather analog visuals into a digital stream of information.
We also spoke about why compression exists, which is so that our computers can handle
all of that digital information.
And we also spoke about compression for delivery of video, meaning sending our video that
we've taken and edited out to different devices like an Okea in 800 or a DVD or posting
it online for download.
And the reason that compression exists for that is so that people can actually get the
video on a reasonable download time, or so we could fit it onto a physical DVD disc,
or so we could fit it onto our Nokia in 800 or whatever.
Now we're going to talk about the technique of compression.
As I said in the last episode, in Linux, the way I compress is simply in the command line,
but there are probably GUI tools to do the compressing.
For instance, when you're using Thogin DVD Ripper or DVD RIP or any of those kinds of programs,
you are compressing, well you're transcoding, so you're taking a video source that has
actually already been compressed into, for instance, InPEG2 and you are translating
it into another compression format with another codec.
So if you've done that, you've already, you're doing what we're talking about right now.
What happens during compression?
Well, there's something called spatial compression and temporal compression.
Spatial compression basically takes the frame that you see in front of you, for instance,
if you're watching a video and you have it on pause, it would take that frame, the current
frame and compress it, just as if though it was compressing it into a JPEG or a PNG,
so it really is compressing it like a still frame.
I know I said last time that you shouldn't look at video as a series of still images,
but as a collection of pixels, that's still true, but it's still, it's sometimes useful
to think of it as, in this case, when it's compressing that current frame, it takes
that whole set of pixels and commits it into an image with some kind, with some amount
of compression.
So obviously the less compression, the more chroma and luma levels that it will see
and it will recognize.
The more compression you put onto it, the pixels are still the same, but it's kind of
looking at kind of a group of pixels, uncompressed, it would see every pixel for pixel.
If you compress it, it's kind of looking at big groups of pixels and kind of making a
judgment, just sort of like, well, that group of eight pixels is predominantly this shade
of blue, so I'm going to cut out all that variation and just make it this shade.
And you do that across the entire frame and you get a pretty good representation of what
you started out with, but obviously you're losing a lot of shades of color and sharpness
and things like that.
That's spatial compression.
There's also temporal compression, which is a really, really fancy way of compressing
video and it's responsible for really cutting down on file sizes.
The way it does it is it looks really at the pixels and it sees all those pixels and
then it looks at the next frame and it sees those pixels and it compares the two.
And it says, well, this pixel here was blue on the current frame and it's still blue
on the next frame.
So I'm just going to encode that once and it looks at the next pixel.
Well, this one really got a lot darker on the next frame.
So I'm going to have to encode that twice and it goes through every pixel and figures
out what it needs to do.
The higher compressed, the lower the less amount of compression you apply, the more precise,
the more strict it will be.
So if there's, if it went to blue to blue, if it changed shade, it's still going to encode
it twice.
If you compress it more, it's going to look at blue to blue and if it's just approximately
the same shade, more or less, it'll just encode it once.
That's what's going on during compression in terms of the actual image that you're seeing,
like the pixel for pixel encoding.
There are different kinds of compression called iframes and there are also p-frames and there
are b-frames.
So the iframe would be what we were talking about in the spatial compression, where it
looks at the current frame and it compresses it more or less as a JPEG or a PNG.
And that's just one set of pixels and that's how it is.
So it's kind of a, it's a freeze, you know, it's that image, that's the iframe, that's
the intra frame.
They're spatially encoded, it's the highest quality image that is going to appear in your
compressed video.
Now, if it's the highest quality, obviously it's also going to contain the most bits.
If we look at it on a frame by frame basis, it would have the most bits out of any of
the other frames.
Now there isn't just one iframe in your compressed video, there's going to be a certain number
of iframes every second.
And so each of those iframes are going to be really, really high quality pictures and
images that will kind of stimulate our eye.
And if we get enough of those iframes, our eyes will probably fool us into thinking that
it's a pretty sharp looking video.
Can't have too many of these because if you have so many iframes, you're not really
compressing it that much.
So deciding on how many iframes you want per second is important.
It's also something that we'll get into in a little while.
First, there's the iframes.
So these are called predictive frames.
And these are not spatially compressed.
They're not iframes.
A p frame is basically a mathematical calculation of what that frame is going to look like using
the current frame plus the frame immediately preceding it.
So it's kind of like p frame equals iframe minus p frame, you know, because it's going
to take the information from the current frame, it's going to compare it to the frame
before it.
And it's going to calculate what needs to happen.
And that's where it gets involved with the temporal compression.
So that if a if a pixel from the the preceding frame looked really blue and it's still pretty
much blue now in the current frame, it's not going to re encode that pixel.
It's just going to borrow that pixel from the previous frame and use it again cuts down
on your bit rate or how many, you know, how much information you've got in your in your
end result.
If you've got, for instance, a black frame right now and the frame before it was black,
you can see how really, even though I've just talked about two frames, we're really only
talking about one because the p frame is just going to multiple, it's just going to use
the information from the previous frame.
So, okay, so it can cut down a lot on your, your end, your end file size.
Okay, so the other, the last way to encode is a b frame.
B frames are yet another mathematical calculation, but this time they use the current frame, the
previous frame and the next frame.
So it's looking both ways.
B frame, I believe, stands for like bi-directional or something like that.
It's looking both ways to calculate what the current frame is going to look like.
B frames are really the worst quality.
They take the least amount of bits in your overall scheme of things, but they tend to
be used fairly often because there's just so much movement going on and the human eye
is fairly forgiving about that, that putting in a lot of b frames, a lot of times cuts down
so heavily on the file size that people do like to use it.
You will see these structures mapped out when you're compressing, if you're like people
who do this all the time, will actually map out the structure of the i and the p and
the b frames.
So you might have something where you want to use an i frame and then a p frame and then
two b frames and then another p frame and then another i frame, and that'll just kind
of loop over and over and over again and that would be your structure for the, for the
your compression.
All this has to do with basically key frames.
If you hear a compressor talking about key frames or a compression program asking about
key frames, it's not really anything more than just how many i frames do you want per
second.
So the lower your key frame number would mean the higher number of key frames per second
because if you have, for instance, a key frame every 15 frames, then you're basically
going to have an i frame every 15 frames and that will be an okay looking picture probably
like I say it always depends because it really just depends on what you are encoding.
If you bump that number up a key frame every 60 frames, it's going to look a lot different
because you're not going to have any really good looking image until 60 frames, you know,
every 60 frames which is like two seconds really.
So that's i, p and b frames, concept of key frames, spatial compression, those are the
good ones, temporal compression, that's the mathematical stuff.
Another variable here is frame rate.
This is not the frame rate at which the video is captured.
Most cameras, consumer cameras, capture at a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second.
Again, the weirdest thing about video is that every time anyone's talking about frames,
there's no such thing anyway.
It's all esoteric, it's the computer can assign any number of frames to video that it
pleases.
The only reason we talk about frames in video is because we were all, we all cut our teeth
on film and so you think of it in frames per second.
But in video, there's no, there isn't ever really a still image.
It's bits that some kind of program is decoding so that we can see it as quote a frame.
A frame rate in the case of compression has to do with really our perception of frames
per second.
And so a higher frame rate would be smoother motion to our eye, whereas cutting down the
frame rate is going to look not quite as smooth.
So if you see video online and it just doesn't, it looks like online video, right?
You see it and it just looks like video that you find online.
Hard to express what that is, but I think you probably know what I'm talking about.
It's just kind of, it's not as smooth and nice looking as something we would see, you
know, on if we rented a DVD or something.
Frame rates for compression is perceptual only, a higher number is going to be smoother
and obviously anytime it's smoother and nicer, it's going to be a bigger file size.
Lower number, a little bit chopier, will require less, less of a bit rate in the end.
It's going to be a smaller file size.
It just depends on the video, of course, as usual, as to what you're going to have to
do for your frame rate.
Usually you can get away with 15 frames per second and be pretty happy with it.
But if it's one of those situations where you're not that worried about your file size,
go with the native frame rate, you know, if you captured it 2997, go with 2997, capture
it 24, go with 24, whatever.
Not really a need to ever go higher than what the native frame rate is.
The last variable, really, of any importance is bit rate.
So bit rate is a direct result of the file size.
So if you've got a file size, I don't know, 50 megabytes and you're going to send it from
a computer to another computer, from the internet to your computer, there's just, it's
a simple calculation, you know, I mean, if the file is 50 megabytes and you've got a
delivery, a bandwidth of, you know, one megabyte per second, you're not going to have
a hard time getting all that information to the end user pretty quickly.
And if you've got a much larger file size and you've got a smaller bandwidth size, then
suddenly it's going to be a problem and there's going to, people are going to have to be
waiting around for it to, to download and kind of cash into their computer.
So bit rate is basically the, the amount of time it takes the video information to get
from whatever source it's coming from onto whatever delivery it is going to.
This applies not just to internet.
You kind of think of it as an internet issue because you go to archive.org or something
and you watch a video or YouTube, you watch a video, the bit rate determines how quickly
it gets from the server to your computer and whether you have to sit down and wait for
it to load first or whether you just turn press play and bang, it starts playing smoothly
without any kind of interruption.
This also applies from like a DVD that you pop into your DVD player and watch on your
TV.
The information has to get off of that disc and out to your TV.
It has to be decoded so that it can be seen as, you know, representation of something
visual and that takes time and the DVD player and your TV can only handle so much information
at one time, which is why that it's actually literally possible to give something too much
of a bit rate when you're compressing it.
It's quite common people who don't maybe know what they're doing when they're encoding
their video to DVD.
They think, well, the higher the bit rate, the better, right, the better the quality.
Put it into the DVD player and it won't even play because it's just 25 megabits per second
when typical consumer DVD player, standard definition DVD players can handle maximum 8 megabits
per second.
Bit rate is important.
You have to know your video and you have to know what you can squeeze out of your delivery
method.
So as long as you've been reasonable with your amount of key frames and you think you're
going to have a nice clear image and you've been reasonable with your frame rate and you
think you're going to have a nice smooth image, your bit rate can theoretically be really
anything.
You have to kind of know what it is that you're, you know, what file size are you shooting
for, what, what delivery method are you going out to and you must also remember that audio
and video are both being figured in here so you're going to have to, that they both contribute
to your bit rate.
Obviously frame rate and key frames does nothing to do with your audio.
Your audio signals apart from that, but you're, you're in result of bit rate.
If you've got really, really great sound, you're stealing bit rate from your video.
If you've got really, really great video and ignoring your audio, you're stealing bit
rate from your audio.
Something's going to have to get compressed.
How long is the video?
If it's an hour going to DVD, you can really, you can give it a lot of bit rate, six, seven,
seven point two megabits per second, three hours of home video that you're going to just
try to get onto a DVD, you're going to be cutting it way down like to two megabits
per second just so it fits on the physical disc.
Knowing what you know, if you're going out to the internet, think about what you're
banned with is what your download speeds typically are and shoot for something that you think
is reasonable.
There's not really a recipe or a cheat sheet, you just have to look at the video and kind
of get a feel for what that video is going to require.
The key to good compression is practice.
If you look at the video and then you go and encode it and then you look at the end result
and you've taken careful notes, you're going to see what happens with certain, under certain
conditions to certain video.
If your computer isn't doing anything at night while you sleep, there's really not,
if you're trying to get into video compression, there's no reason that you shouldn't have
that computer compressing video so that you can wake up and see what you've done.
Anything else is essentially in traditional terms, it would be wasted CPU cycles, right?
The computer's there, you might as well use it.
So practicing and kind of comparing your source versus your end result, looking at the
file size, seeing what variables did what to your video, that's the key to good compression.
Now you know what the variables are, good luck.
It's not as hard as you think.
The frame rate, like I say, perceptual frame rate, what you, the smoothness or not smooth,
key frames, clarity of image, bit rate, that's the kicker, that's the one that's tough.
The I and the B and the P frames, I wouldn't worry so much about that.
A lot of the codecs that you're going to be using kind of has that all preset for you anyway.
And if nothing else, maybe they'll ask you about the key frame rate so you know right
there that that's talking about how many I frames, how clear it's going to be.
There you go.
Thanks for listening.
One more episode probably, maybe two, will delve into the specific codecs that you and
I encounter on an everyday basis.

128
hpr_transcripts/hpr0030.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
Episode: 30
Title: HPR0030: Network Backups
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0030/hpr0030.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:28:09
---
.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm your host, D.J. Dawesman, and today we're going to be talking about backups.
I'm going to kind of dive into a couple of different types of backups.
I'm going to cover a couple of different pieces of software for one type of backup.
I'm going to cover and talk about the hardware setup and then kind of go over some other
concepts and such.
First, the backups that I used to make early on of my systems were basically you power
the system down, you boot it off in floppy disk with Norton Ghost or Clonezilla or something,
and then you either burn it to a local CD or DVD or you can shoot it over the network
to your ghost cast server or whatever you're going to do with it.
That's nice.
That gets a full complete backup of your system.
However, the downside to that is it's pretty manual and your system has to be down for
this to happen.
Because of that, I don't think a lot of people do those often enough.
I know I don't.
What I really like and what I've come to really appreciate about what we use at work is
an online backup system that backs up stuff over the network and automatically tracks
incrementals and runs while the system's up, so your production system so I have to
be down.
I started looking around for an open source way to do this on my own systems at home.
What I came across were two different packages, one is called Amanda and that's been the
good old standby for, I don't know, 15, 20 years now, and basically it's called Amanda
for originally created by the University of Maryland, I believe, and basically it's
a loosening collection of different scripts and programs, all packaged together with
a server and basically it runs as a Damon and so when it runs, just every night, it
just gains your system for files that have changed and that's your incremental backup
because it shoots off files that have changed on each of your servers over to a central
storage backup system.
Of course, the server component on the backup system then saves automatically manages writing
all the backups to tape for you, typically with a larger installation you're going to have
a array of multiple tape drives and a tape library, a robot moving tapes in and out.
You can also do that, they can store, I don't know if Amanda does this yet, stores to local
storage pools on online hard drives basically, so you don't have to have the tape drives for
the backups, but Amanda has been the standby for people doing stuff like that and it mostly
is intended for working with Unix or Linux systems, Windows systems, I think there's kind
of a hack way to do that using SMB shares and so on, to get backups of your Windows systems
using Amanda, I really wanted something a little less clumsy and I finally stumbled
across another package called Backula and their slogan is, it comes by night and sucks the
vital essence from your computers and it's only, it came about in 2000, 2001 or so I think
and it's, all of a sudden it has some very strong development behind it and a surpassed
Amanda quite a bit by its features, capabilities and robustness I think, which is kind of
unfortunate for the Amanda folks, it's a good, Amanda's a good thing, but anyway this
is Backula product, it's basically all completely distributed so you can have like a single
tape drive on each, you know, of several different computers and you can have those act as
agents that receive, you know, you have a central backup server that kind of, you know,
pulls the strings and manages all the backups to these other systems that have the storage,
all your client systems back up to the main Backula server and you could also just have
a standalone Backula system if you have multiple tape drives hanging off this one system
or a tape library, so that's what it does.
Commercial products in the same area of course if you're familiar with TSM or Legato
network or ArcServe backup exec, these are all very, very expensive commercial products
that basically do what I just described network backups with your systems online, so anyway
I decided I wanted to do something like this on my own for my own systems because after
a while you get so many different laptops, computers running and stuff, you don't keep
good backups of them and so I also just happen to have an XABXB210 dual drive 10 cartridge
didn't tape auto-changer that I acquired and I still got to get some tape drives to put
into it but basically any 8 millimeter tape drive will work with this thing that will
be compatible with the robot, the gripper, it's pretty slick, I finally, I've had it for
a couple of years but when I decided I never actually hooked it up and actually I like
used it and so I sat down and basically to get an auto-changer to work with Linux, there's
a couple things you're going to have to do, obviously you've got to get your scuzzy card set up,
I was using a future domain PCI card which worked fine under Fedora Linux, Fedora 5 and it's
pretty old but I've got a system that I'd use that's Fedora 5 and for experimentation and stuff
and at work fine I could control the accessor but under sent OS 5 which is basically Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, I have not been able to get the thing to work and the driver keeps crashing
anytime I try to use it, I don't know if it's an application problem or driver problem on
kind of suspecting it's a driver problem at this point because sent OS didn't come with this
driver by default whereas Fedora did, I was able to get it to compile but anyway some problems I've
had, so basically how do you use an auto-changer with Linux? Of course you mod probe your scuzzy card,
most tape libraries use the scuzzy generic Linux device driver set and so that rides on top of
your above your scuzzy card stack and then also you're going to have to have a scuzzy tape or ST
driver for your tape drive and your scuzzy changer is going to be a scuzzy idea on your scuzzy bus,
your tape drives will be separate IDs also on the same bus so basically you can
cat slash proc slash scuzzy slash scuzzy and if your scuzzy drivers initialize properly you'll see
both the auto-changer and the scuzzy tape drive and from that point you're good to go to try
with the MTX command and you can check out the man page on that for flags and how to use it
obviously and you'll reference the scuzzy generic device. Once the SG module is initialized into
the kernel you'll have a couple of devices out in your dev file system and usually like you'll
have at least SG zero and SG one those will represent the auto-changer and the scuzzy tape even
though you won't access the tape with the scuzzy generic interface to it. You'll use your regular RRMT
or whatever little device you have that your OS provides for that. The thing about scuzzy generic
is basically just very low level scuzzy interface so it just lets commands throw data at the scuzzy
bus, throw commands and stuff and so that's how that's why auto-changers are typically accessed
with the scuzzy generic. So once you get those things working then the next layer the actually user
commands is going to be MTX and there's a couple different user space commands for accessing
your tape-changer but MTX is pretty much the good old standby that I think everyone uses Amanda
uses MTX in order to manipulate the auto-changer or backulate uses MTX and I think they can use some
other utilities too but MTX that's that's the good way to go and it'll do some verification you
can do some basic status information from your library. I've got a little script when I had it
working under Fedora I could have it just you know run the move the robot back and forth and move
tapes automatically just kind of an exercise so that was a lot of fun to see working. So like I
said you were talking describe some of the applications software that writes on top of it so so
anyway once you get these layers of things set up and you get your your applications software
up either Amanda or backulate or possibly something else then basically you should be able to have
nightly incremental backups of all your files. I for most part I you know I've got a lot of like
text notes that I have personal documentation that I write for myself. I've had a growing library
of like video and photo photos and stuff that need to be archived a little bit better than I
currently do. So that's that's some of the things that I intend to use with it. I currently
I'm having some problem. I haven't actually gotten backulate up and running yet but that's mostly
because I once I I switched mid-mid process to a new system I got a dedicated piece of hardware
just to run backulate on and unfortunately like I said I've been having some problems with sent
who has but once I can get those issues resolved and I'll go ahead and start working again with
backula and the thing with with Amanda and backula and the I mean these the trade-off of having
a very convenient nice backup server is it takes quite a bit of configuration and massaging
to get these things to work right. You've got you know exclude lists like there might be certain
directories on your system that you don't want backed up. I don't know things like obviously
you don't want it to mess with proc there's no reason for it to be touching anything under there
and other other file systems and such. So it's going to take some tuning there's going to be quite
a few concepts you're going to have to I get your your head wrapped around and backula try is
pretty hard to explain these concepts early on to help you make the right decisions to configure
the system what you need. Some of the Amanda documentation really seems to be kind of they're
switching from their older style of documentation to a wiki and it seems like there's a lot of stuff
it is just really in the middle of a transition right now. My apologies to the Amanda folks if
they've worked out all those issues since I've looked at it but it seems like they're unfortunately
they were kind of overtaken it seems like with the functionality and backula there but it so that's
basically a good robust backup system how you would use it how to set it up. I'll have some
notes on the hacker public radio for some of these different things I've talked about.
So anyway have a good day enjoy and I'll see you later.
Thank you for listening to hacker public radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net so head on over to

69
hpr_transcripts/hpr0031.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
Episode: 31
Title: HPR0031: Intel Virtualization Technology
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0031/hpr0031.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:28:27
---
Then you can go.
Oh, Ok.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is the MerroVinci.
Coming to you today to discuss a little more virtualization technologies.
Today I'd like to look at an article, if included in the link in the show notes, called
Intel Virtualization Technology and it has a pretty large list of authors.
The top three are Rich, Ulig, Gil Niger, and Dion Rogers.
There's a handful of other authors involved, but they are all members of the Intel Corporation
design team I believe and this article was a cover feature of the March 2005 IEEE,
or of an 2005 IEEE journal featuring the new VT technology that Intel was releasing
within their architecture within the third two-bit and 64-bit architecture.
Basically, in a nutshell, the VT technology allows you to take virtualization and bring
it down to the hardware level.
When we last talked about the main two different types of virtualization, like full virtualization
and pair of virtualization, with this VT technology, this VT technology paired with pair
of virtualization brings the virtualization from that software controlling the hardware
functionality and brings it down entirely to the hardware level and allows you to provide
our two, create CPU access or allow CPU level access to the guest operating system or
the guest virtual machine without having to emulate this technology.
With the VT, they originally had two forms and it was the VTX and VTI.
The VTX technology allows for two new forms of CPU operation.
Those are broken down into VMX, root operation and VMX non-root operation and basically a
virtual machine runs in the VMX root operation and it runs its guests in the VMX non-root
operation.
Both forms of this operation supports the four privileged levels or the four CPU privilege
rings.
Since the VMX root and the guest run in the VMX non-root, that means the guest runs
in a technically lower or they run in a less privileged ring but to the guest operating
system, it has its own ring structure.
To the guest operating system, it has access to ring zero which is the most privileged
access when in reality it's still contained within ring three or ring four and yet doesn't
have access to ring zero except through the virtual machine monitor, the hypervisor as
it were.
Now this technology is absolutely incredible because now we've taken what we needed
to do in software and what we had to worry about code escalation or code privilege to these
access rings, I mean now there's no emulation whatsoever in the software level, it's all
taken care of in the hardware level.
Now the other form of Intel's virtualization technology is the VTI architecture and basically
this is a principal hardware extension and as a addition of a new bit in the processor
status register, so that's the PSR, I'm not very big on CPU construction architecture
so this article might make more sense to other people but basically what the VTI architecture
allows is that as it runs the PSR.VM bit, it's either zero or a one, zero being, as if there
were no VMs that it has to worry about, no virtualized guests that it has to worry about
so basically if there was no VTI technology in the chip or if that bit is signaled as a one
which allows, which would allow privilege instructions and some non-privileged instructions
to cause a new virtualization fault in the processor as it's working.
Now like I said, I'm not a processor individual so I would definitely encourage you to go
through and read through this article to maybe find more information and hopefully some of you
all can go through this article in full, amounts of information that I did not discuss here
because maybe quite frankly I don't understand. I would like to also include though that this
article focuses on Intel's VTI technology. Now that's not to say other chips at manufacturers
have not been working on their own virtualization technology. I know that AMD has their own
VTS technology although they have their own internal name for it which I do not remember but
ultimately this technology has allowed for massive virtualization machines to be brought down
to the consumer prosumer level so that you can run multiple virtual machines on your own personal
computer and yet not be any overhead in terms of processing costs for hardware costs or software
costs because it all occurs in hardware and basically that is closer to as if you had an individual
machine for each virtual machine monitor. This has been the MerroVinci. If you have any questions
feel free to email me MerroVinci at Gino.com. You can usually find me lurking in the Infanamacon
channel on the free node IRC server but this is another episode. Thank you for listening to
the Haftler Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all

2137
hpr_transcripts/hpr0032.txt Normal file
View File

File diff suppressed because it is too large Load Diff

111
hpr_transcripts/hpr0033.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
Episode: 33
Title: HPR0033: Linux Boot Process Part 2a - LILO
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0033/hpr0033.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:30:54
---
Good day. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio episode number 33 Valentine's Day 2008. Will you please be my Valentine? Pretty please.
My Valentine. Anyway, just kidding. My name is Dan Washco. I am bringing you Hacker Public Radio episode 33. This is part two of the Linux startup process and I'm going to be talking about bootloader today.
Lilo originally and you'll have to forgive me because at times I can be a procrastinator and this time prove to be true that I procrastinated a little too much and real life got in the way and while I wanted to record and set all this up this weekend I kind of ran out of time with other things going on and lo and behold here it is.
I have a bunch of notes but for only one bootloader which is Lilo so if you will forgive me this time for not being prepared enough as much as I wanted to I'm going to split this up into two parts and I promise you before my next scheduled Hacker Public Radio episode I will submit the second part of this to fill in for somebody who may have missed or not been able to get their show out.
And hopefully it will be put into play before my third part to the Linux boot process. So what I'm going to actually do is kind of cheat and call this part to a Lilo.
Now last time that we spoke together I provided a overview of the Linux boot process or the startup process and discussed a bit of the differences between system 5 and BSD style systems with regards to how they are configured and the boot process and their configuration files being one of the big differences between distributions.
The other one of course is a package manager but in a nutshell the boot process is a system goes through post post hands off to the bootloader the bootloader kicks the kernel of the image that you want to run your operating system that you want to run that recognizes all the hardware and begins the process called init which initializes the system startup services be it the BSD style or system 5.
The process is what run level you're on starts the application that you want and then passes it off the login that's very simple by top down overview and like I said I'm not necessarily going to go in any particular order but it tickled me to talk about Linux bootloaders next particularly Lilo.
I don't want to say I'm a big fan of Lilo other than the fact that Lilo was the distribution or the bootloader of the distribution that I first started with that bootloader being sorry the distribution that I first tried was red hat and then Susa and then of course suddenly on Slackware for a very long time.
Lilo was the bootloader of choice on most distributions back then and has in a sense fallen out of favor for grub which stands for the grand unified bootloader GNU grub of course and so distributions I still ship with Lilo includes Slackware Arch Linux and Slackware Arch Linux I'm not sure if any other distribution ship with Lilo by default.
Gen 2 has the option of installing Lilo but by and large the other distributions all have defaulted to grub.
Now Lilo stands for Linux loader and it's a fairly straightforward configuration and installation of Lilo.
Most of you will probably never mess around with Linux bootloader initialization or installation that gets taken care of during your installation of your distribution
of choice and you will come to the end of the installation and you might see it remarked you know.
Do you want to install a bootloader where do you want to install it and do you want to edit any images so and so add some stuff to ask you to look over the configuration and probably 95% of the time.
If you're new to Linux you probably don't know exactly what they're talking about and the standard installation of the bootloader should work just fine.
Typically you get asked where you want to install the bootloader it be it in the master boot record or in the root or boot partition of your distribution and by and large.
I have pretty much stuck with installing in the master boot record.
I have never had a problem installing my bootloader into the master boot record even though there are warnings all over the installation process of the bootloader that say
we'll be careful installing it in the master boot record you might enable your disable your system from being able to boot properly never ever my time using Linux and lilo have I ever had any kind of problem.
So as far as I'm concerned it's safe now of course there's probably two or three you out there that are going to hem and haul and say whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa wait a minute.
I remember when installing a lilo into the master boot record host my system and I was I had to throw away the hard disk.
I'd be very surprised if that happened and you know come to think about it is so easy to put a bootloader into master boot record inside or outside of your typical operating system using rescue disks or boot floppies or whatever.
Now being able to understand how to do that will come in handy which I'll explain later if you are a person who likes to boot multiple operating systems and you decide to install the latest version of windows who says that regardless of what your settings are I'm going to overwrite your master boot record
with my bootloader itself. Now lilo Linux loader even though it's a Linux based bootloader it has a capability of launching or booting various distributions of Linux of BSD, BOS, windows and pretty much any other operating system that you can throw on to a computer out there.
Now primarily I'm going to be talking about XADX 6 systems running off of a hard disk or you know BID or SCSI the concepts are pretty similar to flash and CD ROM or other types of boot media or other operating architectures I'll cover those at a later date but for now we're going to basically stick with the general generic old XADX hardware and hard disks and ID and SCSI devices.
So lilo can hold up to 16 images or could boot up to 16 images and like I said it can be placed in the master boot record or in the root partition. Now by and large if lilo is installed on your system you will be able to configure it using the Etsy lilo dot com file.
Okay so lilo dot com file any Etsy directory again upon installation of your distribution of choice you might have the opportunity to edit or manipulate this file so far I've had pretty good success rate not having to do anything but we'll cover some of the stuff that you'll find in the lilo conf section there are two two general general sections of the lilo dot com.
The first one is the global and the second one we'll call the image section now the global provides of course global settings that apply generally to lilo itself some of the boot information and then it passes off to the image section where you can specify your operating system variables in each individual image that you plan the boot.
So to start off with the lilo conf one of the main things you'll find in there off the bat is a boot equals parameter now the boot equals is what specifies your boot device.
For instance if you had a hard disk or an ID hard disk in there your boot device might be dev hard drive a or hda scusy device might be dev sda now you notice that I am not necessarily saying that it is a specific partition or anything to that matter I'm not providing any partitions I'm just talking about what the boot device is.
So the boot device or the boot parameter points to the boot device that has the master boot record on it if you omit this it defaults to being the boot device that holds the root partition of the system that you currently booted so you're looking at something like hard drive a or scusy drive a as your boot device now you might see some other options in there of course another one that is probably key is something called delay delay.
And it is a number in tenths of a second so for instance if it's delay equals 50 that means 50 tenths of a second or five seconds so when the boot process starts when lilo comes up it'll give you five second delay before the boots the default image that provides you the opportunity to stop the boot process choose a different image or pass parameters to the image that you want to boot.
Another one is read only now that tells the of I low to pass on to the operating system particularly Linux in this case that to mount the Linux file systems is read only at boot time and after the initialization of the kernel and the services it remounts before logging it remounts the file systems as read write or whatever specified in the Etsy F tab configuration file.
Another option in the lilo.conf is default equals and the default image the name of the default image which leads us right into the image section.
Now the image section is where you would list your different operating systems that you want to boot in the style that is typically the image equals which is the location of the kernel in case of Linux or BSD.
For example on my slackware or arch Linux systems I keep all my kernels in my slash boot directory so the image says equals slash boot slash VM li and use the VM Linus.
Now that is a compressed image now VM Linus is actually a simlink to the kernel full kernel name which is something like arch dash kernel 26-13-24 whatever diversion of the kernel is or however I named it.
The advantage of boot pointing it towards VM Linus and creating a simlink is if you ever update the system or update the kernel and all you have to do is just rerun lilo again not have to worry too much about editing that lilo.conf file because you've left the kernel name the same you just changed a simlink that points VM Linus that points to your kernel name.
In addition, particularly for Linux, you're going to provide a label for that image which is label equals and the name of your image and for instance I might call mine arch Linux label equals arch Linux so when the lilo menu or options come up at the boot time I can specify the image that I want to boot the operating system that I want to boot be of label or choose it in a list, a menu list of label up there.
So it makes it pretty simple you can name the label anything you want keep it standard numbers and character alphabetical characters no spaces in there dashes and I think underscores are permitted so you know label label is something meaningful particularly if you're booting multiple distributions and operating system something you're actually going to know what it is.
It does not have to match the kernel name your label does not have to match the kernel name it could be called anything you want it to be.
Now of course then the root equals is for the Linux partition or Linux operating system are going to be booting root equals and that's the path to your root partition in some cases it might be slash dv slash hda one for first partition on hard drive a or could be SDA.
Or SDB one for the first partition on your second scuzzy device or whatever it is.
And finally there could be an in it RD which is a path to the in it RD or in it RAM disk part to image that gets pulled in when booting the kernel recall last time that I talked a little bit about an in it RD file or image in conjunction with booting the kernel a lot of kernels these days are modular set of monolithic.
On thus they don't have all the required device drivers or modules built into them instead they're loaded dynamically as they are needed that case when you boot the kernel a lot of kernels because our modular probably don't have the devices compiled into kernel to initialize the hardware on your system thus the need for initialization RAM disk.
And that contains a handful of modules to cover the most basic hardware and file systems for instance ID drivers scuzzy drivers file systems like a EXT file system riser file system XFS file system so that you'll be able to recognize your mount your partition device your disk drives your disk interface your disk device.
And then be able to read the file system that contains the root partition so that as the process continues the kernel can then mount the root file system get access to the necessary modules and then unload the initializing RAM disk and use the modules that are part of your operating system on hand.
At a later date I'll probably talk about how to create the initializing RAM disk it's very simple and pretty handy thing to have as the opposite the other way you could do this you could for go the initializing RAM disk but in that case you either one have to have a very monolithic kernel that has everything compiled into it or two you have to compile your own kernel and knowing what hardware you have you need to make sure that you have compiled enough of the device modules into the kernel to get your system to the point.
Where it can access the root partition and access the modules on that root partition and be able to load in the rest of the modules that it needs if you don't have a single monolithic kernel with everything compiled into it.
So just be aware of that it's pretty easy to render a system unbutable if you compile your own kernel and don't have enough of the devices in there if you're doing a modular kernel install without an initializing RAM disk.
Anyway that being said let's continue on. Now the image section can be used to boot other operating systems. For instance if you want to boot windows you would specify other equals and the partition that windows is installed on.
Now of course windows wants to be installed on the first partition of the first hard drive so it'll be DEV, HDA1 if that's where it's installed and you can provide it label equals windows.
Now for further information on other tweaks and stuff for different operating systems just go see the lilo how to or man pages discuss that in further detail.
I'm not too concerned about booting windows because I never use it so I personally don't really care. Take that for whatever it's worth.
Okay anyway let's take a moment here before I start discussing some other things in the lilo.conf file other options that might hold your interest and one of the limitations discuss one of limitations about lilo.
lilo is not dynamic unlike grub which is a dynamic bootloader lilo requires that you initialize it before it can be utilized.
Thus for people who like to compile their own kernels or if you're running a distribution like slackware or arch Linux that's require a little more hands on of the operating system that when you install a new kernel in those operating systems you need to re-initialize lilo, the bootloader lilo if that's your bootloader of choice to be able to boot that new kernel.
Back when I first started using arch Linux one of the problems that one of the issues with arch because it's on bleeding edge there's constant updates to the kernel and a new kernel was pretty much installed every single time that I would do an update once a week maybe.
And in conjunction with that is they were switching from the initializing ram disk to initializing to using ramFS and all sorts of different ways.
They were changing the way devices were labeled what they were using for what was it the dev file system to debust and each time an update occurred with that you had to pay very close attention to what your how your lilo.conf file was configured to make sure that it was pointing to the right path.
They were pointing to the right device so that when it would install properly and that the kernel name was proper and the in it our DMH was proper if it was using the in it ramFS that that was proper.
So you had to be careful to to make those changes every time and if you didn't make those changes to lilo.conf and then run lilo you ended up with a system that would not boot because it couldn't find the old kernel that was no longer there.
Same thing with people who like to try out compiling their own kernels you need to be very careful when you compile your own kernel that you keep a backup or you make that new kernel a test kernel and retain your original kernel to ensure that you can get back into your your distribution should that new kernel fail or you forget to run lilo on that new kernel.
To that end make sure you keep an old kernel laying around in case something happens with a newer kernel so that you can boot into that older kernel and at least have if not a 100% fully functional system enough to get you up to repairing what may have been damaged with the new kernel.
It's just common practice is almost like having a backup is always good to have a backup kernel and since lilo can hold up to 16 images and 17 different kernels are operating systems.
It's really not it's a no brainer because I don't know anybody who's ever too many people who who boot 16 are more operating systems and they're kind of the exception than the case so to speak so you know make sure you retain a backup is very simple.
That's where the default option in the lilo.conf can come in handy you can keep a pending or you can append a new kernel that you want to try to the top of your kernel list and
relieve the default at your old kernel and if you don't do anything or if something calls your attention way and it reboots is going to default to the old kernel where you can manually choose what kernel you want during the boot process.
If you don't specify that default option it chooses the first image so just be aware of that if you don't have a default equals and then label the default is going to choose the first image it finds so just be aware of that.
In conjunction with that say you do screw something up you install a new kernel you don't run lilo to initialize something or something happens during the process it doesn't get run and you find yourself with an unbutable system well the beauty of linux is very very easy to fix with a system restore disk I rescue disk a live CD or whatever anything that gets you to a linux system that will boot a kernel.
And then when you get to the point of your bootloader grub or lilo on the rescue CD or whatever you pass the parameter to it root equals and the path to your root partition be a dv slash hda123 whatever and it will boot the kernel off the rescue CD the rescue the live CD the rescue disk and it will mount your existing root partition on this the image.
That has been rendered useless because lilo isn't working and allow you to go in and fix the problem with very easily so that you could just run lilo again and initialize it and you'll be good to go or change your lilo dot com that you didn't edit in the first place and be back to running a system that fast and that's a good tip for if you are installing multiple operating systems you reinstall windows and windows wipes out your master boot record and you have no way to boot your your linux operating systems anymore.
Just boot with a rescue CD a live CD or a rescue disk or whatever and run that amount your root partition pass the root partition parameter through the bootloader and rerun lilo and you'll be good to go or initialize grub again and reinstall grub into the master record you'll be good to go anyway I don't want to get too much into grub because we're going to cover that in the next topic is grub is fantastic you're going to love it as much as I do.
But anyway let's finish up with lilo some of the other stuff in the lilo dot com file that you can pass is a VGA mode and again this is primarily for linux. VGA equals and a mode now there's ask which will ask you at boot which you want to do or go to a standard mode of 640 by 480 I think it is 80 columns by 80 columns wide by 25 columns high.
That's also considered normal and extended is 80 columns wide by 50 columns high I believe it is smaller text number is a text mode and that is provides you with a color depth and a resolution be a 640 by 480 100 by 600 1024 by 768 or 1280 by 1024.
There's a little chart which you can go to the notes in my on my thing odds it's in a gen 2 documentation have a link to it the VGA modes it's by passing a number something like number 790 if you pass that is a color depth of 32000 or 15 bit color depth at 1024 by 768 which will give you a virtual terminal like that.
Okay another option that you can pass is install equals and that defines the type of interface that you're going to see when lilo comes up when you after post there's a text only interface which pretty much doesn't show you anything except the prompt now if you just hit enter it's going to boot your default image if you hit tab twice or tab at the text interface it'll pop up a little list of what images are available the boot and then you can type in the image that you want.
There's a menu interface which is a lot of distributions had defaulted to for a while when you boot it up you get this like red and whites menu type screen it looks kind of nice and at least the the images that you have on the labels of your images it has a little asterisks next to the default one and usually highlighted on the default one you can just use a mouse key not a mouse key the up and down arrows to move between with label you want to boot or it'll put your default after the time out.
There's a BMP which uses an image I've never really used that and or you can specify a file to use for the interface by a path to the file which is what the old version of install used to equal anyway by large text and menus seem to be the easiest things to configure and that's probably all you'll ever need now on a side note there.
You can pass a bunch of different parameters to the boot image through lilo or grub or whatever you're using at the point there when you're at the option to boot the image in any of the install types text menu or or graphical image you usually get an option before you load it to you select the image you want and then you can pass
parameters on there like no dash ACPI or ACPI equals no different parameters that you'll pass to the kernel at boot time used to be that you would have to pass the IO and IRQ addresses to Ethernet cards or the Ethernet card module during the boot process if you had we're setting up a router and have more than one Ethernet card
of the same type in there that's an example you can go to the linux boot prompt how to and it'll has in depth discussion of what options that you can pass to the kernel upon the boot loader boot time okay fine let's go to prompt prompt is another one if you specify prompt in there it will not auto boots unless there is a delay which a delay will will wait for a specific time out and it will kick into the
default image but if there's no delay or no time out specified a prompt will not auto boot the kernel after a specific time or automatically auto boot the kernel it will just wait until you specify which image that you want to boot
that pretty much covers a lot of lilo right there again I want to stress that one of the disadvantages of lilo is that it's not dynamic so if you make an update to the kernel
and you do not run lilo you're going to end up with an unbeatable system if you've wiped out the old kernel may changes that way given that there's not much else to say there are different boot parameters or initialization parameters that you can pass the lilo when you run it lilo is going to be found in the S-bin directory so S-bin lilo so it's to initialize lilo it's just as simple as typing lilo is root you can pass the option to switch dash B
which specifies the boot device that's handy if you are booted in from a live CD and you make some changes you can mount your devices or specify lilo.com file and specify a different device other than the one that you currently mounted as root or might be specified in your lilo.com directory
you can specify a path to a separate lilo.com that's not in the Etsy directory with the capital dash C or dash capital C
for more information again see the man lilo for what you can pass on the boot on the initialization line last thing I want to cover with lilo is when you are booting off a lilo
the lilo will provide a little bit of a status as to how far it's proceeding generally it'll kick off the initialization of lilo and you'll see it say lilo on there and continue loading your kernel image.
now should there be a problem with lilo it'll stop at whatever letter that it had a problem that which signifies a stage if you don't have any lilo letters there's no L on the page
okay it means that it's not installed or the petition which the boot sector is located is an active or you cannot probably not devote booted from the current device or there's a faulty problem there's a problem with the device that you're booting from
if you get an L and nothing else that means the first stage the boot loader is loaded but it can't load the second stage it might specify an error code for you
this usually indicates the problem with the media bad disc parameters in the bios if it does li that's the first stage was loaded second stage was able to be loaded but it failed to execute it could be bad disc parameters in the bios
then you might have lil which is the second stage has been started but it can't load the descriptor table from the map file this is again this is caused by a media failure or bad disc parameters in the bios
there could be an lil with a question mark which means that the second stage loader has loaded at an incorrect address which is caused typically by bad disc parameters in the bios and lil dash which is the descriptor table is corrupt again caused by bad disc parameters in the bios
and lil you see that means everything's loaded properly so it's a handy little way to get a better idea of where things are screwed up if it doesn't able to boot your kernel
if it can't boot the kernel it will tell you that no kernel image was found
lilo is a handy tool to know and use but like it said it's been phased out by a lot of distributions in favor of grub which we will talk about next time
i thank you for listening to agropublic radio please provide feedback to not just my episodes but anybody else's episode check out the website keep up the date on what's going on
and thank you very much again for listening and have a happy valentine's day and be listening on the lookout for part to be grub coming soon to agropublic radio episode have happy
thank you for listening to agropublic radio, hpr is sponsored by caro.net so head on over to caro.nct for all of us need
you
you

187
hpr_transcripts/hpr0034.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,187 @@
Episode: 34
Title: HPR0034: Cowon D2 Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0034/hpr0034.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:32:09
---
…
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is Chess Griffin.
In this episode I'm going to do a little review of the Kwan D2 portable media player.
This is a device.
It's been out about a year and I've actually had a couple Kwan products.
I had an iAudio 5, which was just an audio player that also had a radio and the ability
to record.
But the Kwan D2 is a new player, like I said, it's been out about a year or so, but it's
a great little device and I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about it and just
tell people about it.
It's especially friendly to people who use operating systems other than Windows or OS
10.
The Kwan D2 is a video and audio player.
It's a pretty small device.
I'm looking at mine now.
It's slightly bigger than square.
It's rectangular, but it's maybe 3 inches by 2 inches by a half an inch, something like
that.
I think it weighs a little over 3 ounces.
It's really small and it's got a nice color screen of, I think it's a 2.5 inch video
screen display, 16 million color display.
The resolution is 320x280 and it's a touch screen as well.
For the audio, obviously this will play MP3s.
It plays OGS, it plays Windows media files, it plays FLAQ, Waves and maybe one or two
other codecs.
I think it plays AACs as well, not the DRM version from the iTunes music store, but if you've
got other audio files in AAC format, you know, Und DRM, I think it will play those as
well.
The video portion, well, the sound on the audio is great.
I mean, it's just fantastic.
There's a couple of good reviews of the Kwan out there and I'm not much of an audio file,
but I mean, it sounds really good to me and I've had one iPod a long time ago, many years
ago, that has since died and I think this audio quality of the Kwan's is at least equal
to the iPods if not better.
But the real cool thing about this device is the fact that it can play videos, I think.
There's a lot of video players out there, but the size of this device and some of the
features really make it stand out.
For the movies, it'll play in AVI format and I think Windows media video format as well
as far as the containers go.
For the codecs, I think it will play MPG4, again, Windows media and I believe it plays X
Vid and Divix, although I haven't tried those yet, but I'm pretty sure it does.
I have played MPG4 files in the AVI container and it plays really well.
Again, the resolution is 320 by 240, 30 frames a second.
If you encode those files with MP3 audio, then of course the audio portion will play
just fine.
I'll come back to the video stuff in a few minutes about encoding.
It'll also record, line in recording, external mic support, voice recording, it's got a built-in
little teeny tiny microphone.
I've tested the built-in microphone and it sounds okay, nothing really great, but I think
the line in recording and the external mic support is supposed to be very good.
The only downside to the audio recording is that it records in Windows media format.
My old iAudio 5, I'm pretty sure, would record in MP3 format.
I also have an iRiver 790 that records an MP3 format.
In fact, that's what I'm recording this episode on right now, is the iRiver, but it does
do the recording.
And being able to record off the radio is pretty nice.
It'll also show photos, as you would imagine, being a video player, so you can drop some
photos, JPEGs, I think, and I don't think there's any limitation on the size or the quality
or anything.
It also has a pretty basic text viewer, and I think it supports up to text files up to
two megs, and it works okay, you can read the text, although it's obviously pretty small.
As I said, it does have a built-in FM radio, as well, which is pretty nice.
As far as the built-in memory, this comes in in three different sizes currently, in terms
of the internal built-in memory, two gigs, four gigs, and eight gigs, obviously flash
bass.
It's not a hard drive bass player.
It also has what's great as an SD card slot, and I think it will also take MMC cards.
I don't have any of those, but I do have a four gig SD card.
And with a firmware upgrade, it'll take SD HC cards as well, so you can conceivably
get this thing up pretty big with a lot of extra space.
It is USB 2.0, high speed, in terms of connection, so that works pretty well.
File transfer speed is like 35, 40, something like that, so it's not super fast, but it
works.
The battery life is pretty good.
They rated it 52 hours charge.
It's got a built-in rechargeable battery, so it doesn't take AA or AAA or anything.
It's a rechargeable battery.
They say 52 hours, I've probably gotten at least 40 hours, and I've probably gotten pretty
close to 50.
That's for audio playback.
If you watch the videos, obviously the battery life will go down.
I think they rated it 10 hours for video.
The package, when you buy it, it includes an AC adapter.
There's a little teeny-tunny plug on the side that you can use, and you can plug it in
with charge using the AC, just wall outlet.
You can also charge over USB.
It charges much faster with the adapter than USB.
I think a full charge on the adapter only takes like three hours, and with USB it might
take seven to ten hours, something like that.
But it works fine.
As I said, it does include the AC adapter, USB cable.
It also has TV out, which is kind of cool.
I haven't tried that yet.
It doesn't come with a TV out cable, though, but you can buy that.
It will play, and some of the stuff I've read is that it plays pretty well if you attach
it to a TV or something.
That works really well.
As far as encoding videos, as I said, the resolution is 320x240, and you've got to get it
in an AVI container, MPEG4.
What I've done with pre-existing video that I've had, a couple of different ways you can
do it, you can obviously just manually use any kind of tool, you know, transcode or something
like that to encode.
There's also a little script out there, and I don't have a link for it, but I'll try to
dig one out for the show notes.
But if you just Google around for Kuan D2 video encoding script or something like that,
you should come up with it.
I actually found it linked to in the Ubuntu forms, and there's even a way you can make
it a Nautilus script, so if you use Ubuntu and you use the Nautilus file manager, Nautilus
has the ability to have sort of drop-in scripts that appear in the right-click context menu.
So when I did that, I would right-click on a video, and it would say encode to Kuan D2
or something like that, and it just worked great.
I've got several videos on my SD card, and they play really, really well.
No pixelation, it looks really nice, and it plays very smoothly, no chopping this or
anything like that in the playback.
You know, a couple other points, one nice thing about it is that obviously it just
mounts as a USB-mash storage device, so that's great if you use Linux or BSD or something.
It does come with some software, sort of their Kuan's version of an iTunes type of music
jukebox software, but I've never used it, so you certainly don't need to use it, and
it won't run on Linux, it's just I think it's Windows and Mac software.
But since it's just USB-mash storage, it's very easy to drag and drop files, create
folders, create a folder structure however you want.
Within the UI, you can create playlists and all of that, I tend to just navigate through
the folders, and that plays just fine.
Speaking of the UI and the touch screen, the UI in all the Kuan products I've found to
be, not as easy to use as maybe the iPod, you know, you have to press a lot of buttons
to get to the song you want to play or something, but once you get used to it, I mean it works
pretty well, you know, it just just takes getting used to, I guess.
It does have the ability to resume where you left off, that's a setting I noticed was
not enabled by default, so by default it'll not save your place, but you can do that.
You can also save bookmarks, and you can have multiple bookmarks in video or audio files
that you can come back to later.
The other nice thing as far as users of Linux and BSD and stuff like that is, and I think
this is awesome, I wish all players did this, but firmware updates are simply drag and
drop, it's great, it works really well, basically what you do is you download a zip file with
the firmware from the Kuan website, you know, unzip it, and it will may have, you know,
a few different bin files for the firmware, and there's easy instructions, you basically
just, you have to do it a few steps, so basically you would drag the first bin firmware into
the root folder on the Kuan, and I think you then disconnect it and reboot it, and then
you do it with the second bin file, so there might be three or four bin files in any one
firmware upgrade, so you've got a drag and drop and reboot three or four times, but it's
really painless, and it works perfectly from Linux, that's what I love about that, rather
than having to, I think for my old Kuan, the I audio 5, I think I had to do the firmware
flashes through Windows, so that was a real pain, but this doesn't require that, so it
works great, it's a great little device as far as cost, like I said, I got the 4-meg
version, and I think it was maybe 160 or 170, something like that, it comes in, I believe
two or three different colors, I got the black one, I think there's white and maybe silver,
I'm not positive with that, the screen is, like I said, it's a great screen, very, you
know, it's a great resolution, it looks really good, it's obviously very susceptible to
fingerprints, it came with a screen protector, it's not even really a screen protector, it's
like, you know, when you buy stuff, it comes with a little sticky thing that it's got a
little tab that you can peel it off, the first time you use it, I've actually left that
on until I have time to actually buy an actual screen protector, just to kind of protect
it, I also bought like a little rubber kind of, you know, skin for it, you know, to protect
it a little bit, I've dropped it a couple of times, and the skin has protected it just
fine, so that hasn't been a problem, I think it comes with a carry strap and the, you
know, stuff like that, but I mean, that's, I don't ever use that kind of stuff.
The other thing I'll mention is the little cover that covers up the USB port and the VGA,
the TV out and the AC adapter plug, the whole, you know, you plug the AC adapter in, it's
got a little plastic cover, and you got to kind of pick it off with your fingernails,
and then it kind of extends out on a very thin little plastic, you know, string almost,
and it's very, it's, that's the only part of this device, it seems very flimsy.
The rest of the device seems really well constructed, and the buttons are responsive,
and the user interface is very responsive, but overall, I mean, I think the device is
made well, except for that little cover, but I don't ever really open it up too much
other than to charge it, I guess, and I do all my stuff, I usually just use the SD card
that I pop out and pop in an SD reader on my computer and just drag files onto that.
So anyway, overall, it's a great device, I highly recommend it for the cost and for
the features, I think you get a lot, I think I like the fact that it's very operating system
agnostic, doesn't require any proprietary software or anything like that.
If you listen to fair play music, which I believe is DRM music, Windows, DRM music, I don't
know, I don't use that, but I think it will play that, so for people who do have that
kind of stuff, it'll work, I'm pretty sure, but I don't have any DRM music to try that
out with.
Anyway, it's definitely a great little device, big thumbs up, check it out and play around
with it.
I don't think they're in any stores, I got mine on new egg, but there may be a few stores
where you can find it, but a very cool little device, and if you get it, I hope you have
fun.
Alright, thanks for listening.

191
hpr_transcripts/hpr0035.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,191 @@
Episode: 35
Title: HPR0035: An interview with John Whaley
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0035/hpr0035.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:33:41
---
5
Hello everyone, this is Hacker Public Radio and today we have a special guest from Mocha
5.
Please introduce yourself.
Hi, I'm John Whaley, I'm one of the founders of Mocha 5.
And could you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Sure, so I graduated from Stanford with my PhD in computer science and Mocha 5 was actually
a research project at Stanford that was called the Collective.
Before that I worked at IBM, Japan for a little while and before that I graduated from
my undergrad at MIT.
Pretty darn sporty.
Let's see, what exactly is Mocha 5?
So we'll go ahead, what we do is we have a complete desktop lifecycle management solution
that we deliver as a managed service.
Our technology enables IT administrators to easily manage virtual computing environments while
at the same time giving end users the freedom to work any way and anywhere that they want
using any operating system on ABC.
Are you reading these questions?
Are these answers or do you pull them out at the top of your head?
You said it started from this paper called the Collective, could you explain that a little
bit?
Sure.
I would remember that we have all ranges of technical knowledge of people that are listening
to the show.
Sure.
Okay.
So the Collective was this research project at the Stanford Computer Science Department
and the goal of this Collective project was really to make computing a lot easier.
We saw like a lot of people having a lot of pain, administering their machines, keeping
them up to date, keeping them from free of spyware and malware and so there's just a lot
of pain around system administration and keeping computers working.
And so what we did is we kind of took a look at this problem and thought there's probably
a better way to do this.
And so we came up with this idea of using virtual machines to help with system administration.
And so the idea is you run everything on top of your virtual machine and we have a special
virtual machine format called the Live PC.
And this Live PC has these three key features.
First of all, it has an automatic update to the latest version so the users are always
be running the latest version.
The second thing is it has an intelligent streaming and caching system so that users
can get started quickly and also work offline once they have the whole image they can disconnect
from the network and keep working.
And the third key feature is the smart rejuvenation.
So every time you start up you get a fresh copy of the OS and the applications but your
user data, which is your documents and settings, that will persist.
And so this Live PC provides an easy way for the IP administrator to administer a large
number of users.
While at the same time it gives the end user the freedom to work however they want, where
they want.
You can run any actually fixed operating system on top and it works exactly the same.
Okay.
Now your client runs on Windows and it runs on a left-hand, do you have a Linux client?
So we have a version called Bare Metal and what it is is it's a Linux client that's
bundled with a stripped-down Linux OS and kernel and so you can install that directly
onto the machine and it will boot up and then you'll have a list of Live PCs there and
you can just use it to launch these Live PCs.
And you get the Live PCs, it's all up your website and I actually installed the Bare Metal
installer and you can browse through and look at all kinds of different stuff.
I actually found it through HIKU which is a derivative from the BOS and it's really
neat to be able whenever they have an update that it's automatically there and I'm running
it and I don't have to download the ISO and run it to a CD and then run it.
So it's really cool stuff.
That's great.
Yeah, we have the, so on our website we have this Live PC library and this is all like
community contributed with these Live PCs that people have built and there's like hundreds
of these community contributed Live PCs and it's mostly free and open-source software and
we get a lot of people using it just to play around with different OSs and kind of just
see what people have done and have built and it's really nice because you know, you
know, we have people who are interested in things like Linux but they didn't really know
how to get into it or how to try it out and so our system using the Live PC, you just
click once, you click on the website, you can just click the download it and it'll start
streaming that virtual machine to you and you can start it up before the entire thing
has downloaded it and you don't have to install anything or anything like that and it all
runs within this secure virtual environment.
Because we have a lot of users who use it just to just to try out Linux or try out some
other alternative OSs.
Now, a lot of your users of Mocha 5 are just people that are just trying to play out with
it, try out with things, play around with them and obviously you're trying to, this
is a business you're trying to make some money and you all want to do this at a business
to help the administrators, you know, administer things for lack of a better word.
Do you have any clients that are actually doing that or are you still testing?
So we're planning to launch our company and our 1.0 products in the second quarter of
this year, so pretty soon.
We have some companies and trials doing some pilots and things like that and so there's
a number of interesting uses of the technology right now that people are using it for.
The first is the disaster recovery solution where, you know, let's say you're executive
that has a lot of caring around the laptop and something happens to that laptop.
They can carry around a USB stick that has a Mocha 5 on it.
They can then plug that into any PC that, you know, they go to the best buyer or whatever
to go buy a PC, they can just plug in the USB and it has all of the secure environment including
like the secure VPN and those kind of things so they can kind of be up and running quickly again.
So we have a few people using it for a customer using it for disaster recovery.
Another big one is lab management where you have a computer lab.
You know, maybe it's a training lab.
Maybe it's, you know, in a school, things like that where you have a number of machines
and an administrator needs to administer those, the software on those machines.
And so what the administrator can do now is they just maintain one image.
They maintain the one IPC image and that's automatically distributed to all of the different machines.
So it makes their job easier.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, so the rejuvenation aspect means that, you know, so like if somebody messes up the machine somehow
and saw software and things like that, all they have to do is reboot and then always goes back to a pristine state.
And whenever the administrator wants to post an update, you know, there's a new hot fixes or a new versions of software
and install new software and things like that.
They just, on their machine, they just start the IPC.
They install the software and test it out and make sure it works.
And then they post it to the server.
And then, and then all of the clients, all the subscribers of the IPC automatically get the latest version
and start running the latest version.
So this makes it a lot easier to administer a large number of machines and keep them up today and keep them working.
At the university, I attended, they did this with Ghost and they'd have to go around and physically ghost all the machines
and whenever there was an update, they had to make a new ghost image and all that mess.
And this would really save them a lot of time, you know, a reboot a lot easier than actually sitting there.
Yeah, so I mean, Ghost is really, is focused on the deployment aspect that you wanted to deploy some image.
But we're really focused much more on the entire lifecycle.
So it's like, it's not, like, beyond just deploying the image, you have to keep it up to date, keep it, you know, keep it maintained and all these things.
So that's, we're much more focused on this, on the whole lifecycle of a desktop rather than just the initial deployments.
So what are some of the disadvantages of this model?
Do you know what I'm saying?
Well, I mean, I think, I mean, this is definitely a radical, you know, a different, a radically different way of doing computing.
You know, now you say, I'm going to run everything on top of a virtual machine and I'm going to, you know,
and the virtual machine is automatically going to rejuvenate on every reboot and things like that.
And so this works particularly well in the cases where you have a, you have kind of more of a controlled desktop or locked down desktop where you have people, you know, basically, you want to have a large number of computers who are kind of running pretty much the same software.
You don't need to have a lot of customization on each, on each machine.
In that case, you know, you really get this, you can use our system to get much better scale to, you know, scale up to more, more computers are a lot easier.
But like, if, you know, in the case where you have, you know, like, a lot of like, if the way I think about it, this is like, this is really the computer, the type of system that works really well for people like my, my parents, or, you know, my,
not so tech savvy friends who I always have to go and help doubts and, you know, go fix their printer because it doesn't print or go clean up their system of spyware and things like that.
This, this system works, works really well for, for those kind of cases.
Good deal. One of the disadvantages that I thought of, as I was reading the paper on the collective, was that, you know, I'll talk a lot about the security and how it would, you know, protect people's data, this that and the other.
But I thought about the underlying operating system that's running the virtual machine. You have to walk around and actually physically secure all of those still on top of the image that you all are hosting on the, on the server.
Yeah, so that's why in the bare metal case, we, we, we use this Linux kernel that we stripped out like most of the services and stripped out as much as possible just to try to make that, that lowest level, the most, the most secure possible.
I mean, for example, if you are running the Windows clients, well, then you're still, you know, kind of subject to what the underlying Windows is to some extent, even though your, even though your live PC contains all the bits for the operating system.
And you're actually running, you know, right, right off of those, you're still, you know, for example, could potentially be subject to key loggers or things like that on the underlying OS or exploits in the underlying OS.
And that's why I feel like for, for high security applications, we recommend the bare metal version because that, that has, has better security because of the underlying Linux, stripped down Linux.
Good deal. What kind of open source software does Mocha 5 use like in their office or in their product?
So like, in our product, we make a, make use of a lot of open source libraries like, live curl or live XML and WX widgets.
And those libraries really help us out a lot because they made it a lot easier to build reliable cross-platform software.
And in our data data development, we use a lot of open source development tools like subversion or cruise control track, GCC, things like that.
And this, this open source software works really well for us because first of all, it's cross-platform and we have a cross-platform client.
And we also use a lot of open source software within live PCs.
So if you see a lot of the, a lot of the open source software in the live PC library, you know, we use that quite a bit.
There's some interesting, interesting software out there that we never would have, would have realized until somebody posted it in a live PC and, and let me download it, try it out and find it to be really useful.
I was reading in the paper that you all are doing authentication over SSH and using tunnels to securely send the data from the client to the server.
Not that was really neat.
Yeah. So, I mean, that's, so we, the paper was published, I think, back in 2005 or we sensed, you know, that was, we sensed kind of moved beyond that and, and improved the system in various ways.
So, that was the first information that we had done at Stanford and now we don't actually use the tunnel over SSH in most cases, just, you know, just because of things like proxies, things like that.
So, for better compatibility, we, you know, use other techniques like HTTPS, things like that.
Good deal. Could you all start at Mocha 5 without open source software?
Well, we, we probably could have been able to start the company, but we wouldn't have been nearly as far along as we are today without open source software.
It's definitely accelerated our development and made, made things like that, that community driven a live PC library possible.
So, we, it, we have definitely benefited from, from open source software.
Let's see, going down the list.
Are you planning on open sourcing any of y'all software that y'all write?
So, our current, like currently, we're really focused on watching the company and just getting one point out, out of the door.
That being said, it's definitely not out of the question.
I personally am a big open source proponent and I've started and contributed a number of open source projects on sourceboards and some other sites.
And Mocha 5 itself is also a big proponent of open source, you know, with the community driven live PC library and really kind of helping to promote Linux on the desktop.
And we get a lot of users who are interested in playing around with Linux but, you know, don't know where to start and with Mocha 5 you can play around with.
And we make it really easy to play around the alternative operating systems in a safe way without having to, to install anything.
So, it's definitely not out of the question and, you know, and I think that, you know, in the future that at least some parts of our software may become open source.
Okay, y'all are currently using VMware for your virtualization.
Are y'all planning on building your own, using, continuing to use VMware, using some open source stuff?
So right now we, we, we partner with VMware and, and use their virtual machine monitor layer.
And so right now we focus on VMware just because that one's really stable and has good performance and it's, it's cross platform.
However, the technology is really independent of the VMM layer.
We could take out VMware and plug in another virtual machine monitor with very few changes to our, to our system and to our codes.
And we just happen to be right now just focusing on VMware just because that one is one of the better virtual machine monitors.
But if you look at, if you look at what's happening in the virtualization space, there's definitely a lot of, a lot of new VMMs that are appearing, you know, there's, there's things like Zen, there's things like virtual box, for example, QMU even, you know, a lot of these are free and some room are open source.
And so I think that that in the future, this virtual machine monitor layer is really going to become like commodity, like you can, you can use, there's, there'll be a lot of them available and you can use, you can use any of them.
And we're much more focused on the kind of management of the virtual machines and keep them up to date and, and keeping them working.
And, you know, it's kind of like, once you have all of these virtual machines, what are you, what are you going to do with them?
And so the, we, the MoG-5 is, is really focused on that, you know, making it easy to manage virtual computing environments.
Good deal. So what are you, we are going to take the Linux client out of the bare bones or bare metal installer and just let me download it and use it.
Well, I mean, it just, it comes down to, you know, we, first of all, we wanted to really focus on the Windows client first because honestly that's where most of the pain is.
And we, we do have the bare metal client, which has the Linux client bundle then with the substrate down Linux OS.
And it's just a matter of, you know, kind of question of priority and question of resources, but we're definitely interested in, in doing that.
And I'm sure, you know, some of your listeners, for example, would probably be able to figure out how to take the bare metal and refackage it as a standalone client because it's, it's just kind of in there and, and it's, and it's, it's going to be that difficult.
Good deal. Good deal. Well, do you have any, any questions or anything else you want to say? I know you need to get back to work.
Yeah. No, I think, I think that, that, that pretty much covers it. So I just want to encourage your listeners to go and check us out at local5.com. That's moka5.com.
And we have, we have a lot of IPCs there in our IPC library. You can, you can try out and play around me and thanks a lot for taking the time and thanks a lot for your interest.
Hey, well, thanks for being on the, uh, big radio show.
Thank you for listening to Hack the Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net. So head on over to caro.int for all of us.
Yeah.
Yeah.

372
hpr_transcripts/hpr0036.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,372 @@
Episode: 36
Title: HPR0036: LPI Certifications Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0036/hpr0036.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:35:57
---
Hello, welcome to Acupuncturistic Radio, my name is Kent Fowell, and this is the second
business series of LPIC.
Today we're going to be talking about IRQ, DMA, ports, and first of all, Balsist.
Balsists are a way to connect different components to your computer.
The advantage of a Balsist is that it makes parts more interchangeable.
So for example, you want to replace your graphical card, you simply take it out,
open up your computer, take out the graphics card from its slot,
and you put it in a new one.
Or if your computer doesn't come with a Firewire port, you might buy a PCI card,
supporting Firewire controller, and you put it into your free PCI slot.
Now, a typical computer has several different Balsists.
So connected to your CPU, you have a backside Bals, and then a frontside Bals.
A backside Balsist is connected to level 2 cache, and then that intern is connected
to the memory controller, which is connected to the RAM.
So when the CPU wants to talk to RAM, it will first go along the backside Bals.
If it's in level 2 cache, it comes back very fast to the CPU.
If it doesn't, it'll go to the memory controller, and then out to RAM,
and come back relatively fast.
Now, the advantage of this system is that the CPU and the backside Balsist typically run
at the same speed, so you have very fast access times.
And it means your memory can be very, access to your memory can be very fast.
Now, the other Balsist that's connected to the CPU typically,
and this typically depends on the architecture of the computer you're talking about,
is a frontside or a system Bals.
And that operates at a slower speed than the backside Balsist,
but quite fast nonetheless.
Off the frontside Balsist, it has a connection, okay, it has a connection to the CPU,
it also has a connection to the memory controller, it also has a connection to an ADP chipset,
and it also has a connection to what's called a Bruce Bridge,
which I believe is the North Bridge.
Now, this frontside Balsist will allow the very fast communication to between the CPU and the graphics card.
It won't be as fast as going over to the level 2 cache on the backside Balsist,
but it's still quite fast, and it'll allow fast access to the RAM.
Now, the point of the Balsist Bridge is so that slower components Balsist can be connected to the frontside Balsist,
and that an example of a Balsist that would be connected to the North Bridge would be the PCI Balsist,
for instance, and here you can put in your PCI devices.
So they then would communicate at a slower speed to the Balsist Bridge,
which would communicate at a faster speed to the frontside system Balsist,
which would communicate with the CPU.
They connected on to the PCI Balsist is the South Balsist Bridge,
which would then connect to ISA devices like hard disks and whatever, or CD-ROM devices,
which are typically a lot slower in relative terms.
So you want to access something from CD,
you'll come into the ISA device in via the South Bridge,
along the PCI Balsist and the North Bridge, into the frontside system Balsist, into the CPU,
and then go maybe out the backside Balsist through level 2 cache,
into the memory controller and not to run.
It makes a lot more sense if you see it in a diagram,
and hopefully they'll put a link to the in the show notes to this diagram,
which I'm actually taking from.
They're really excellent how stuff works guide on introduction
onto how to PCI works.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.
In the IBM documentation,
they refer to the PCI Bals and the ISA Balsist, as well as AGP to a lesser extent.
So let's have a look at comparison between the ISA Bals and PCI Balsist.
So the ISA Balsist is 16 bits wide, operates at a speed of 8 megahertz,
and that translates to 16 mega bits per second data transfer.
If you think of Balsist, there were 16 bits.
If you think of that as 16 lanes along the motorway,
and if you think of Balsist, there's the speed limit that data can transfer down that line.
If you compare that to that 16 bits to the PCI Bals,
so instead of 16 lanes of traffic, we now have 32 bits,
32 lanes of traffic going along, and the original specification
was a Balsist speed increase in megahertz from 8 up to 33 megahertz,
as is a grand total of, instead of 16 mega bits per second, up to 132 mega bits per second.
Now there's since being revisions of that where it's gone from a 32-bit Balsist
with double that up to 64 bits, and they've gone from 33 up to 133 megahertz.
So now the PCI X standard 64 bits, 133 megahertz,
and it provides data transfer rates of 1 gigabit per second.
Now at the time of the ISA standard was coming out,
and the PCI standard was out 132 mega bits per second,
wasn't fast enough for very demanding 3D graphic work,
like video games or commuterated design 3D rendering, and that sort of thing.
So a separate bus was developed called ADP,
which is acceleration graphics port, and this was developed by Intel,
and that following on from our diary, the mirror on,
that connected directly into the front side system bus.
Now I don't know about harder, but I believe that the new PCI express bus
that's coming out just fast enough, so that it'll take over from AGP.
All these things are in a state of change, so if you just get the concept of what a bus is,
I think you're sucking diesel.
Now finally, Linux provides a command that will allow you to
identify the PCI devices that are in your computer.
That command is called LSPCI.
You know, if you go to a console on your PC,
you should type in following command,
man space LSPCI.
Now the first part of that command is man, which means,
which is manual command, which is, give me help on this,
or show me the manual for the following command,
and the command itself is LSPCI.
So when you do that, you'll get, and this is typical from a man command,
you'll get the name section, you'll get LSPCI,
list all PCI devices, synopsis, LSPCI options to worry about that,
and then this is the juicy part, the description.
LSPCI is the utility for displaying information about all PCI buses
in the system, and all devices connected to them.
By default, it shows a brief list of devices,
use the options to describe blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, and it describes additional options,
but this is your first use of the man command,
just pick out that much, and you do very well.
To exit the man command, you typically type the Q key on your keyboard.
Now, the next command that you're going to type at the console is LSPCI,
and then press the enter key, and here we'll see things,
and this is going to vary from PC to PC,
but I see stuff like host bridge, PCI bridge, USB controller,
ISA bridge, IDE interface, multimedia audio controller,
modem, VGA, ethernet controller,
that's my network card, firewire.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Typically, when you're troubleshooting a problem,
this is a very good tool, because it says,
okay, PC, what's connected?
Okay, moving back to our textbook again,
page 8, IO ports.
When the CPU needs to communicate with peripheral device,
it does so through an IO port, or sometimes just simply a port.
When the CPU wants to send data or control information to the peripheral,
it writes to a port.
When the device has data or status ready for the CPU,
the CPU reads the data or status from the port.
Most devices have more than one port associated with them,
typically a small power of two, such as 8, 16, or 32.
Data transfer is usually done a byte or two at a time.
Devices cannot share ports, so if you have an ISA card,
you must ensure that each device has its own port or ports assigned.
Originally, this was done using switches or jumpers on the card.
Sometimes later, ISA cards use something called plug and play,
and this is discussed in the later section.
If you want to see what IO ports are news on our Linux system,
we can do so by looking at the contents of a file
in a special directory on your computer called the PROC directory.
That's at the very root of your directory.
You'll have slash p or oc slash.
Now, if you do an LS,
and first of all, we'll do a man of LS,
and we'll see that LS lists directory contents.
And the description is list information above files,
which is enough to know what LS does.
We'll quit now.
We'll do an LS, space, forward slash p or oc, forward slash,
and then press enter.
And then there we see a load of numbers,
and then we see things like CPU info, crypto, IOMM,
interrupts, and IO ports, along with various other things.
And the PROC system is called a pseudo.
The PROC directory is called a pseudo file system.
So it's not actually a file system,
but it's just a way you get useful information from the processor.
Unix has this philosophy that everything is a file.
So this is a nice place to read these files.
You will get information.
So what we're going to do is we're going to use the cache command,
and we'll again do the man, space, CAT.
And we'll see the cache, kind of catenates files,
and prints on the standard input.
We'll press Q to get out of the man program.
And what that means is it's just a way to display text files
is the simplest one.
It also does other things, which may or may not be just
a little later on in the series.
So we'll type CAT, space, forward slash PROC,
forward slash IO ports, and then press Enter.
Now a lot of stuff goes past.
A lot of numbers, a lot of, so we have memory addresses,
then what I call on, and then two columns, memory addresses,
columnless column separator, and then on the right-hand side
we have what those are.
So for example, if we look at memory address 0060-006F
is the keyboard, and that is actually good,
because it's what it should be.
So that's where you get information about the IO ports and use.
So another thing we're going to need to know about is interrupts,
and we're going to page 10 of from our textbook interrupts.
So how does a CPU know when the last output has finished
or when data is waiting to be read?
Usually this information is available as a status register,
which may be accessible by reading one or more of the IO ports
associated with the devices.
Two obvious problems arise with this scenario.
Firstly, the CPU has to spend time checking the status,
and secondly, if the device has data coming from somewhere
such as an attached modem, the data must be read by the CPU
in a timely fashion, otherwise it might be overwritten
by the next available data byte.
The dual problem of not wasting unnecessary CPU cycles
and ensuring data is read or written in a timely fashion
or are addressed by the concept of interrupts.
Interrupts are also called interrupt requests or IRQs.
When something happens in a device that the CPU needs to know about,
the device raises an interrupt and the CPU temporary stops
whatever it's doing to deal with the situation.
If you want to think of an analogy for this,
I believe in the rural parts of the states
where the postbox is at the end of the road,
that if you want to send some outgoing post or mail,
you put your letters into the postbox
and you raise the flag at the postbox.
I'm not American, so I don't know if it's true,
but I've seen it in movies, so correct me from wrong.
Anyway, if it doesn't work like that pretend it does.
So then your post office dude drives along his or her van
and writes the Joneses they don't have the flag up,
so I don't need to worry about them.
The Smiths don't have their flag up, I don't need to worry about them.
But yeah, job blogs do, so they have the flag up,
so I need to go and deal with whatever it is over there.
And this essentially saved the CPU having to go
to the various different devices, so thinking in terms of the computer,
it's going in the original designs and we'll go keyboard.
Do you have anything for me? No.
Mouse, do you have anything for me? No printer?
Do you have anything for me? No.
District, do you have anything for me? No.
Going from that to a system where they don't,
or there's a flag up there on the hard disk,
so I'll go and deal with that.
So essentially that's what an interrupt is.
The funny thing about interrupts though,
is that you're only allowed to have 16 of them.
And that's going from 0 to 15.
And the funny thing about it is that interrupt 5 is shared
between either the sound card or the second parallel port.
Now the reason you're only allowed to have 16 is because,
yeah, who would need more than 16.
But if you're thinking about it well,
okay, my PC has a lot more than 16 devices on a mice keyboard,
printers, modems, external disks, blood, a bit of that.
Okay, so we now have 16 interrupts.
So you're thinking, well, I can attach 16 devices to my computer.
Well, yes and no, some of them are reserved.
So if we go through the list, 0 is the system timer.
1 is the keyboard. 2 and 9 shared are the video card.
3 is come 2 and I want to come 4.
Interrupt 4 is come 1 and come 3.
Interrupt 5 is LPD2 or the sound card.
RQ6 is the floppy disk controller.
RQ7 is the parallel port 1.
RQ8 is the real time clock.
RQ9 is redirected to RQ2, so you actually don't have 15.
RQ10 is available.
RQ11 is available.
RQ12 is a PS2 mouse.
RQ13 is the mathematical processor.
RQ14 is the hard disk controller and RQ15 is available.
So we're looking at a total of 1, 2, 3, 4.
RQ ports that were available.
Okay, it's all very well.
We now have the concept of an interrupt.
We've also got the concept of iable port.
Now, just to explain what these are, why they're used.
So say I have a brand new expansion card.
It doesn't matter whether it's a PCI or an ISA or whatever card.
I don't want to put it into my computer.
So I've got my acne corporation ISA card.
I need the CPU to be able to talk to that.
So first of all, I'm going to need a free interrupt in order to get the CPU's attention.
And then I'm going to need at a minimum to define a range of ports so that I can send data to and from the CPU.
Now what a port is commonly used in France as a term for a door.
So if you think of it as a block of apartments, so everybody, all the apartments I've got won't address.
So it's number one main street.
And then under that, under you go to number one main street.
There you are.
Big block of apartments.
And you go to port, FFFF.
High, zero to zero across.
And there's a door and you go in and you pass your package in and you get a delivery receipt out.
And then you go in your merry way.
So that's a port.
And if you think of an interrupt as the example of flagging the land, I may have a woman as a case maybe.
Okay, those are two things.
Now we already explained about the speed difference between an ISA bus type and a PCI bus type.
Now the maximum speed on an ISA bus type is 16 megabits per second and for technical reasons.
It would be nine megabits per second.
But yeah, you know, if you send another print job, that's fast enough.
So why is ISA?
Why has that more or less been replaced by PCI devices?
And the reason for that is because these settings needed to be configured manually.
And by manually, I don't mean yes.
Later on, there were programs that will come with the network card that would allow you to run a special program
that would allow you to set these interrupts, for instance.
The ports were too bad because you had a selection from where you could generally select a free port easily,
easy enough without having conflicts.
Very important point to remember is ports cannot be shared between two devices.
Each device must have its own port.
This applies to DMA channels later, which we talked about later.
And ISA devices cannot share interrupts either.
So if you have an ISA device, you would actually go along with a little jumper,
which is on the board itself, there was two pins sticking out and you would take a little jumper
and you would put it over that and short the two pins creating a circuit,
telling it that's interrupt, whatever the interrupt was.
The problem is we had 16 interrupts as you saw earlier on.
But only a few of them were available, a few of them were shared with the sound card.
So for example, interrupt 5, if you had a second LP line print report,
which was common in the days, or if you had a sound card, you could use interrupt 5.
You might be able to get away with interrupt 15, you might be able to get away with 10 or 11.
But it was basically hell setting up those things.
I remember going, spending a weekend with a mid-mind and work,
going around resetting all the natural cards to IRQ 15 from 5,
because it was the only common denominator in all the natural cards that we had.
Because of course some of the devices would come and they would only allow you to set IRQ 5 or IRQ 15.
So you didn't even have the choice of the additional other ones.
Now that was a pain in the wherever.
So when PCI devices came along, they had a major advantage for me personally in that they had a thing called an interrupt handler.
And that was a lot of the PCI buses shared one IRQ.
So the CPU knew that the PCI devices, one of the PCI devices had a wanted its attention.
So it would go over there.
The interrupt handler would see, it's not the first one, it's not the second one, it's not the third one,
but it is the fourth one.
And then the fourth device would communicate over IRQ 5.
Then on the next occasion, when IRQ 5 goes up, it might actually be the first device that communicates.
So that was a major relief.
There was a trouble period where some of the motherboards were coming with PCI devices and ISA devices.
So you still needed to make sure that the ISA devices had their own IRQ set and ports obviously.
And that the PCI device didn't devices altogether didn't conflict with that chosen interrupt.
It's a general tip.
If you have a computer now that has an ISA device, please don't use it.
Keep it if you want a piece of history or whatever, but you're far better off getting a router like a WRT54G.
It'll be faster and run silently.
It's more energy efficient and all of that good stuff and more power and it'll be more standard and more modern.
And you can pick them up relatively cheap.
So now we've covered interrupts, we've covered ports.
But there's another thing that we should discuss on page 11, and that is DMA.
We mentioned earlier that communication with peripheral devices through IO ports occurs by your two at a time.
For fast devices, service interrupts could use a lot of CPU capacity.
A faster method is to use direct memory access or DMA, in which a few IO instructions tell the device where in RAM to read or write data.
And then the DMA controller provides hardware management of the actual transfer of data between RAM and the peripheral device.
So what this means is you've got a slow modem coming in with some data.
And it's operating hyperfast, like a rocket speed, and you've essentially got data coming in on a modem at the speed of some dude taking a leisurely stroll down the park.
So you don't want the CPU to be stopping from the slighting fast speed to take in these messages from the strolling dude.
Here's part of the message, wait for the go home, get the next one, I'll come back in and give you the next one.
So what it does is what the DMA allows you to do is tell that dude, go write directly here into this part of memory.
So get your message, put it all into memory, over there, stack it up in a row, and then we'll flag it and drop it, and then we'll tell the CPU,
OK, CPU, there's a whole goal of that over here, CPU goes over, read all of that at once, that at least is how I think it works.
OK, moving on to plug and play.
Plug and play means that you can connect the device or insert a card into your computer, and it is automatically recognized and configured to work with your system.
To be fully implemented, plug and play requires three things, a bias that supports it.
The core utility that enables PMP and detects the PMP devices device also reads the ESCD for configuration information on existing plug and play devices,
and the ESCD stands for extended system configuration data, and this is a file that contains information about the installed plug and play devices.
You also need an operating system to complete the configuration process started by the bias.
The plug and play automate several key tasks that were typically done either manually or with an installation utility, and those tasks are setting an interrupt,
and signing direct memory access, signing memory addresses if the card needs additional memory.
So for example, sometimes you can, especially on laptops, have the video card uses some system memory instead of having its own onboard memory,
and then that will be assigned and reserved for that.
Then we also have the input output configuration, and these settings define the ports used by the device for receiving and sending information.
Now Linux provides some tools that will allow us to see what's going on here.
And in the textbook on page 13, he makes reference to ISA PMP tools, which on my Ubuntu Gusti, Ubuntu installation is unavailable.
Now there is ISA PMP, neither is PMP dump, but LS PMP is available in the package PMP utils and one aptitude installed PMP utils later.
If you run the command, you'll guess three columns, 00, columns, 00, up to 00, columns, 0d, and then an identifier PMP, 001, and then a brief description of what they are.
So I've got system board, PCI both, system board, system board, PS2 port, IBM enhanced keyboard, essentially.
Everything is a plug and play device on the laptop, even though it's soldered on.
So that is possibly a useful tool for you.
And that's the end of this episode in the mini series on LPI certification for hacker public radio.
For feedback, corrections, or contributions on the series, please email me at ken.valon asgmail.com.
For general feedback on hacker public radio, you can email feedback at hackerpublicradio.org.
Remember, hacker public radio is for the community and by the community.
So if you'd like to do a show, a series of show rules, or provide some other assistance, please email admin at hackerpublicradio.org.
With that, I'd like to thank you for listening. I wish you a very good day.
Thank you for listening to hacker public radio.
Thanks for watching.
Thank you.

347
hpr_transcripts/hpr0037.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,347 @@
Episode: 37
Title: HPR0037: This Old Hack Part 5
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0037/hpr0037.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:38:51
---
You
I'm working on a very special project today, I'm getting ready to go to Shmookon here.
I'd like to thank Larry Pesci from Paul.com for giving me a ticket to go to the conference,
otherwise I wouldn't be going to the conference, I'd just be going up to a party for a night
and sleep in my van and drive home the next day.
So what I'm doing is I'm trying to create a Shmooball Cannon, now a Shmooball is a stress-releaf
ball, one of those foam ones, and they use them at the conference when a speaker is talking.
You can throw the Shmooball at the speaker to interrupt the speaker in order to ask a question
or if you don't agree with what they're saying.
Now I know last year somebody made a Shmoob Cannon that was a modified leaf blower.
I've done some research on the internet and I see that people have made a ball launcher
out of PVC using one piece as a pressure rise chamber and then a sprinkler switch, a sprinkler valve
for, I suppose it's for landscaping purposes, a sprinkler valve to release the pressure
and so pretty much you pressurize your PVC with a pressure tank or some CO2 and then you
get one shot at about 40 to 80 psi which will launch a weighted tennis ball, something
like a 100 to 200 feet and a good height and they do this, it's called a pneumatic antenna
launcher.
You can research that they use the ball, they put a fishing reel type set up on the end
of the launcher and attach fishing line to the ball, shoot the ball over the top of
trees and then they get the ball and lower it so they can get a hold of it and then you
string an antenna up into the tree tops using air pressure and a valve to release the
pressure suddenly.
Now if anybody knows about making a potato gun, potato gun is PVC without a chamber on
the end but instead of building up the pressure and releasing it with a valve you have a larger
end with a screw-in cap, you spray some like a clampable gas in there like hair spray
or something and you have an ignition switch from a camp stove, you flip the switch, it
lights the gas and it sends the potato launching from the explosion from the compressed gas.
I've decided I had a moment of inspiration, came up with something almost completely different
and I'm not going to go, I don't want to go into all the details of the actual propellant
quite yet.
I'd like to leave that as a surprise for after the conference, but I have already been
to the store, picked up a few little things that I'm going to need to build the launcher
and it's very simple, designs, much like a regular potato gun, ever had a schmoo ball
before.
So I had to ask Larry what the size of a schmoo ball was and he says it's about two
and three quarters of a niche, so he was using three-inch PVC pipe, so I went ahead and
got myself a piece of three-inch PVC pipe, a coupler and a clean-out cap which if you
were doing plumbing then you could have this outside of your plumbing system, so if you
had a drain clog, you could take a cap off and run out of snake, which a snake is a
plumbing cleaning device that you unwind into your plumbing system and it kind of breaks
up the clog.
So I got a cap screw in, clean out cap, I got a coupler and I got two cans of stuff
here and one of them is the purple primer.
Now if you're doing PVC you have to get primer, which usually is purple, they do make
clear primer, but it's a little more expensive and there's regular PVC cement, now you're
not actually gluing it as well, you're not gluing it like you think it might be.
PVC, when you use the cement it actually bonds the two pieces together physically, not
just by just making them sticky, making them stick together, it actually takes the two
pieces and bonds them together.
I'm getting ready to do, so I've got my work area here and I've laid a bunch of newspaper
down so I don't get purple primer because it will stain permanently and I'm going to
clean the PVC, then it's already cleaned, it's already dry and I'm going to just use the
dremel here to kind of take the edge off of the pipe, which I'm going to be inserting
into the coupler.
I think I'd better put a safety goggles on to keep plastic shrapnel out of my eyes and
I will also put on a dust mask here to keep from inhaling, particularly matter, because
who wants to breathe in, you have PVC stuck in their eye, okay so all I've done is created
a rounded leading edge on the PVC pipe here, that way when I insert it into the coupler
it will not scrape the cement off of the edges of the wall so much and hopefully create
a better fit because I did a little dry fire testing yesterday without it even glued
together using my method of propulsion and I was, let's see, I was using a closed 12-ounce
beer bottle with about an ounce or two ounces of liquid still in the bottom of it as my
projectile and I had the cannon propped up against the well house kind of like a mortar
at a very steep angle, I mean like it wasn't quite vertical, you know, it was maybe ten
degrees off of vertical, something like that and I test fired two or three shots with
the longest shot being about a little over a hundred feet with a height of about, I'd
say you know another 50-75 feet shooting it horizontally, I'm fairly certain I could
launch a glass beer bottle about 200-250 feet or so, so I've got the leading edge trimmed
up and so now I think I'm just about ready to prime and prepare to glue my coupler and
my end cap here, do some sections, actually I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to round
off the end cap as well which fits into the coupler so that way I can just go ahead
and glue everything all at once, I think I mentioned I was using a Dremel to do my sanding
for me, it's a Dremel Lithium Ion cordless, it's 10.8 volts, 5,000 to 35,000 RPM model 800
and I've got to tell you it's my wife got it for me for Christmas, she's the last year
of the year before, the battery holds a charge for a really long time, it's got a little
metal hook, a metal ring on the bottom so if you wanted to hang it up you could hang it
up and use the shaft attachment if you're doing some detail work which I really recommend
if you're doing some kind of artistic carving because it takes the weight of the Dremel
out of your hand and lets you just use the tip kind of like a stylus or a pen so you
can more accurately do your creative endeavors, so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to do the primer here and the top is, oh they're pretty good, I found that sometimes
you have to get a little creative getting the tops off of these things because they tend
to go in there pretty good, go figure considering it's a volatile substance and you don't want
to accidentally spill it, so now I've got to find some wrench, some sort, I guess I can
get your I can hit it, try to wrench, vice grips, chisel that might work, just something
to loosen the cap up, just a little bit, I'm sure plumbers that are using it usually
have some sort of plumbing wrench available, so if they won't open up they can figure
something, okay, wrench is just a little wrench isn't going to work, needle nose pliers
are going to work, so I'm going to pick a cap up here, chisel, see if I can get it loosened
up here, that doesn't work, I'll find, I'll add some vice grips but I used them on my
last project, I don't exactly remember what I did with them when I was done, which is
always a cherished thing to do, I think I kept the chisel just right because it's got
curves around it and I could get it turned, all the reason I'm using a chisel by the way
is because it was the first thing I found and it's probably not the best thing to use but
you know I was going to use a flathead screwdriver but I said it was the first thing I found,
chisel are actually generally pretty freaking sharp, but I used this one when we were fitting
in the house, doing the floor, and so I'm pretty sure it's not, the sharp is too
in the shed, okay, well windy tonight, but I have found my trusty and only slightly rusty
vice grips, which I will definitely be able to remove the top of this cannon primer, okay,
now I'll take one second, get the right tool for the job, okay now you want to prime the
whole thing, the whole area where you'll be fitting the piece together, I'm going to do
this in sections, so first I'm going to prime one side for the clean out, for the end cap
screw on, now it slides into the coupler and purple stuff is kind of messy so that's
why I've got all clothes on here, I'm holding the fitting upside down and the primer doesn't
have to be wet, it can dry, so if you happen to make a mess you can take a second to grab
a paper towel and clean up a little bit of the excess if you want it to kind of look
like a nice, well if you want it to look nice you can either get the clear primer or you
can mask off areas of the PVC that you don't want stained, so I've got my PVC cement here,
got the area to prime, the most important part of the seam is the bottom two-thirds because
the sticking action is going to happen, so be sure to use plenty of cement and I'm just
going to take my end cap and slide it in with a twist, make sure I get a good tight seal on it
and that's that part there, I guess I'm going to take a screw out just in case I make a mistake,
I wouldn't want my end cap to stick in place, I'm going to do the same thing to the other side of my
coupling, again I'm holding it angled down, applying a liberal amount of primer to the inside of the
coupler, make sure it's evenly good and purple, I guess it's a good thing about it being colored is that
you can see the evenness of the application, okay, I'm done with the primer, so I'm going to go ahead
put the top back on that and get ready to attach the coupler to the end of the PVC tube here,
go ahead and kind of brush it off, make sure there's no loose PVC flakes on there to interfere with the
weld and then just apply PVC cement over the primer, be sure I get the whole area coated, all right,
nice and good there, nice and even, wipe off these little drips, my paper towel, just slide it on with the twist,
yeah, so I dried fire it, I didn't dry fire it, I fired it live yesterday, after I bought the parts,
just to see how well I thought it was going to work, and truly impressed with the results,
one particular test, with a large amount, not a large amount, but I use a different method of charge, I use a
different type of charge to launch the projectile, and the amount of pressure it created actually blew the
unglued end cap off of the PVC pipe, and so it gave me a little idea as to the actual, you know,
amount of pressure being created, another thing I noticed was, another thing I tried to launch,
was an empty beer can, and when I went to retrieve the beer can, why I didn't find as far as the
bottle, which had more mass, so I guess it traveled farther, but I didn't notice that the can,
it had been partially crushed by the force of the charge, and I thought that was pretty interesting,
so that glue's got to sit, but read the instructions here, that it's set for 24-48 hours,
before applying pressure, well that sounds about right, it'll probably be another day or so before
I actually get to test it anymore, now that it's glued up, and I've got a three-foot length here,
which is pretty big, and I've read that I can go down to about 19 inches, and I'll still have optimal
range, apparently the projectile actually gets the pressure built up in front of it,
and it slows the rate of the launch, so what I'd like to do is reduce the barrel length,
and use the smallest charge possible, because it's really loud as hell, and one of the tests I did
yesterday, it pretty much sounded like I was shooting off some kind of fire alarm, now I know
what a shotgun sounds like in a 22, and it's somewhere in between a shotgun in a 22, and I'm
planning on taking this to Washington DC, so what I essentially have here is half of a pipe bomb,
that I'm planning on taking to the nation's capital, which that's a dumb idea, especially since I
spent a week before I built it, googling around on how to build my bombs, so since I know that they
have the ability to unnecessarily monitor my surfing habits, which of course, you know,
Google monitors, everything you do, but all I would take would be to put two and two together and
come to the wrong conclusion that I was trying to, you know, do something that I'm not, and okay,
so I went to the store to get the pipe, and they had like a sheet, it must have been like a 10,
15 foot piece of three inch PVC, I mean this thing was huge, and I was like yeah,
I'll just take the whole thing, and then I got it up to the counter, I was like you know,
I really don't need all this pipe, and so the guy offered to just cut me off a section, and so
I guess he didn't feel like saw it all the way to it or something, because when he came back,
he had, he'd just like broken three feet off of the end of the pipe, I mean it was all jagged,
there was a point on it, it looked like he'd kill somebody with it, I mean, so first thing I did
before I used it to launch was I cut off the jagged piece, and it's still, I still didn't get
a really straight cut on it, because I left, I kind of left the hacksaw sitting out from the
last project, and he got rained on, kind of rusty, and think about a rusty saw, is it's kind of hard
to cut with it first, but after you get going, it just, the rust works off the blade, and it cuts
fine again, and so it took me a minute or so to get it going, but once I got the blade cleaned off,
and it started cutting, and it cut pretty straight, there's just a little lip here, so all I'm
going to do now is, I'm going to just kind of round off the, the leading edge for aesthetic purposes,
in case I decide to just leave it a three-foot mortar, and I don't do anything else to it.
All right, that's a lot better, and I'm still using my safety goggles and my dust mask to prevent
inhalation of PVC, and get it in the eyes, wash my hands, I've got powdered plastic on my hands now,
and since this is not a Chinese cooking show, I won't be serving plastic. I will talk a little bit
about the type of charge that I'm using, I'm not going to go into detail, like I said, I don't really
want to spoil the mystery, as it were, pretty much what I'm doing, is I've experimented with
using both plastic and glass bottles. Well, it turns out that the chemical reaction that I create
get really freaking hot. I mean, one of the ingredients is water, and everything's got
fucking water in it, right? So, the reaction is between water and one of the other elements,
and it's catalyzed by a third element, so it's really a trinary compound creating a large
amount of pressure in a small space, which if you know anything about explosives, an explosion
is expansion plus compression, like say you take gunpowder and put it in a dish, it's just going
to make a flash. If you take gunpowder and put it in a metal casing and prevent it from
expanding rapidly, it will make an explosion. So, what I'm doing is I'm creating a quite
somewhat volatile chemical reaction in a enclosed space. In this case, I'm using 12-ounce
Mickey's beer bottles, which they're called Mickey's Grenade. They have a white mouth and they
have a screw on cap, which is perfect, because I put the ingredients into the bottle and I can
screw the cap back on, and the expansive forces created will cause the top to pop off. The bottle
doesn't explode because the cap is the weak link in the chain there. So, what I do is I put the
ingredients into the bottle and drop them down the tube, and I've got like maybe 30 seconds to a
minute, depending on how much water I add before the pressure inside the bottle is large enough
to blow the top off. So, after I put the charge, the charge would be the bottle with the
ingredients. I drop the charge down in the tube, and then I drop my projectile on top of it,
so that's the process there. So, now the only thing left to do is wait, I've got to wait 24 hours,
which I won't wait 24 hours. If the weather's okay tomorrow, I will go out and do a test
fire tomorrow that should be pretty nice. I will be able to get an idea of the size of the charge
I need. Then, for the conference, I will pre-mix the ingredients. Well, since once you mix them together,
they become volatile. What I'll do is I can mix two of the ingredients together and they don't
interact. They, you know, it's stable. And the third ingredient, I'll keep separate, and so when
it's time to do a launch, then I will add the ingredients together and create explosion.
All right, welcome back day two of the Schmoo Launcher project. I'm just getting set up here.
A couple of beers. And the first thing I'm going to do is set up my camera, have a launching
line, and then I'll pace off from this line so I can get a consistent reading of the actual
range of the gun, the cannon, 73 paces, which that's something like, well, I'll get to take measure
out now. Actually measure off how far one pace is from my heel to my toe, and so I can get an
accurate idea of the actual range. So now I'm going to take a lighter to my firing area,
so I can figure out how to best set up the shot here. I'm more interested in the range
than the actual firing of the device, but pay the camera set up and go do a trial shot just to make
sure everything looks okay, and then I will set up my mixing station and prepare to do it for real.
Hopefully I won't blow up and get the PVC shrapnel in me because PVC doesn't show up on
show up on X-ray, so I think I can fake it. I really don't love how I'm going to put it on my shoulder
or hold it down at my hip. I don't know if I'd rather get probably a shrapnel in the hip
than in the neck. Okay, I took a little test video there. I'm just going to review it.
Now, okay, well, video looks good. I'm going to drink beer.
If you're ready to mix me up a batch to charge my machine here, let's see, I've got
done. I know I've got enough for two, maybe three total launches. I'll go check around and see
what other kind of stuff I have because I don't want to boil. I'm going to get a little creative
here today. I might have some RPG action going on, but it just depends on how well things work.
Okay, what I'm going to do now is I'm almost ready for the final phase of the testing project here.
All I've got left to do is prepare my concoction and add some water and other stuff to it,
and it will be good to go. I'm showing it down. I've got enough bottles here
to where I can do at least one appropriate launch. I can play around and I like you do two more,
just depends on the quality of my caps because I know I don't know how recycling them is going to do.
Once they've been fired, cold beer, actually they're not cold, they're room temperature suitable.
Tonight I'm, once again, drinking warm walkies best ice. I think what I've decided to do is
I'm just going to do a little shot from the hip model horizontally and I don't know what to expect
from it, exactly. I will court him and make my 15 minutes fame here, just a hand at the solution
to the bottle. Shake it up real good. I'll drop it in the tube. Drop it in the tube.
Well, that was different. I'm not sure exactly what happened. It seems that
the bottle got hung up in the tube. Not quite sure what happened, but I've got to do one more
test here. That was a miserable failure. I don't know. I must have used too much water. I'm not
really not really sure. I'm trying to do it. Well, at this don't do it. I'm pretty likely to
blow my freaking hand off this time. Don't really know what happened. We went off.
Seems like it had a decent amount of pressure. The projectile just didn't just didn't fly.
Maybe my set of this camera shot. I gotta do it. So I'm going to do it again. It's time to bless
this water. Let me see. I can't really imagine what went wrong. The car in the world.
Shoot the car. It looks like a star. So I'm just going to try this experiment again.
Well, I almost killed myself at that time. The small amount of water just happened to make
thing go off a little too soon. So now it's going on to the even more risky, dangerous
trial attempt. The time now out of my bottles, which I planned on using, and worked so well
in the initial testing. I'm not really sure. Well, that last cap had been used once before. So
I'm fairly certain that that has something to do with it. Now I know we have to use one of these
bottles again. So I'm going to take it back over here. This should be a dosage. And for the first
try, I'm not even going to hold it in my hand. I'm just going to record it because it's a good
chance that something could really explode. I don't want to be that guy that gets blown up.
I mentioned that I've been choosing 12 ounce makies. I won't liquor beer bottles because they don't
melt. The top just blows off once it builds up pressure. But with the case of soda bottles,
they get hot. So I am going to use more water to prevent the explosion from happening prematurely.
In other words, before I can get the fuck out of the way. This should work. Now I only got a
limited amount of stuff left. So this is going to have to be the official grand finale. I've got to
make this work. I'm going to go all RPG areas. This one. I'm going to keep talking this and see
just how crazy it is. And a little less water and it's not going to work at all.
We would work about this in the glass bottles. So with the plastic bottle, it starts to expand
right before it explodes. So if the first bottle doesn't blow up before the second bottle starts
expanding, then I'm just going to have a double explosion in my chamber, which is probably just
going to get hard to clean them with a fucker out. So on that note, I will not be
making the RPG using two plastic bottles today. If I do plan on making a grenade,
then I will be using a glass bottle for the grenade as well. So I am almost ready here. Of course,
this is a part of my great one. Getting ready to achieve greatness. This should be good.
I wind up the shot. My spear box target. Best I can.
Wait for the traffic to go by. Getting everything ready here. Might have used too much water at
time. You can usually hear the plastic one before they're about to go off. It kind of makes
groaning sound. I must use way too much water. Nope, here we go. Here we go. So I'm just going to
have to know. Fizzled out again. That's the problem with the plastic bottles is that, like I said,
it's hot. They don't melt rather than explode. Okay, well, what to do now? Because I could try a glass
bottle with a used top one more time. Plenty of water in it and hope for the best.
A little more air. Plenty of freaking water. So I want to have plenty of time to get the hell out of
the way. I know that's way too much water. Okay, well, this is going to be it. I'm sure I'm
even going to hold it. Be a man. Hold it. As I shoot. Just like I planned on. Now edit this whole
thing out and act like I'm not retarded. This would bring you a future note to not take your face
directly in front of the barrel of a mortar. No matter how safe you think, oh, this is not going
to work at all. That cap is fucked. This is going to work very well. Very disappointing. Here we go.
In my explosion. Again, toxic fuel. This has been a pretty big waste of time so far, but I did
say that my shot wasn't going to work. The cap wouldn't go on just right. So now I'm going to have
to get more water. I'm trying to shoot a whole more time. Bunch of water. I think it's a problem I've
seen when I first tried this. I did it at a near vertical, near vertical. So I'm going to try to
put shit down the water. I mean, I'm going to fill it just about all the way up. I don't know.
When I had it vertical, it just compressed out the top and made explosion happen. But since it's
at such a horizontal angle, I'm not certain that it's even going to work with the plastic bottles.
I know I have a more making bottle. So what I'm going to do after this is this doesn't work.
I go to town, I go to town tomorrow, and if this doesn't work, then I will get some more bottles
that work because I only had one. I think I must have had some kind of issue with the projectile.
So I'll be starting with fresh materials. This is a part of the learning process. It's really,
you know, it's like you don't want to go into something not really knowing what to expect.
A little more propeller. Shake it up. Re-e-e-e-e-e-e.
Oh, cool. This stuff seems to be happening.
Learning up the target. Raise the elevation slightly.
Okay, check. So there's about to happen. Probably nothing. Here we go. This is it. It's a car coming
to. It's not working. This is about again. I'm going to manage to make a big mess.
Well, that almost worked. See, by looking at the bottle, that it banded properly, but it still
got so hot that it melted to the plastic before it had a chance to, before it had a chance to fire.
So, I guess I'm going to clean it with a mess and edit this down. Let's try it again.
Disappointing, but not discouraged.
How the hell are you? How the hell are you? This is Fox Fire, and I'm coming back to you once again
to recreate the original testing of my Canon mortar device after a series of failures in the last
attempt. I have decided to come back once again, revitalized with the audio quality sounds a
little better. That's because it is. I've got a new cheapo headset. This time it's not a ear clip.
It's a behind the head, and that's got some kind of big fancy name that I can't pronounce,
but that's not important. So I'm ready to do my proof of concept. Once again, this time I'm going
to set it up in mortar mode. I've got just about everything ready to go here, and I'm going to
get it set up. So all I have to do is add water, turn on the camera, and set my charge, and run
away. So that's what I'm going to do now. So I'm going to go set the camera, and there will be
some video of this available somewhere. If you know me, I've probably shared it with you.
If I haven't shared it with you, then you might see when the camera is recording, adding water.
That should be plenty.
Charge is set. Safety goggles on. I'm going to step back and wait for the boom.
Then kind of a fun day. Yesterday we had a 65 mile an hour winds. There wasn't any storm,
just some hellacious wind. So I had to spend a good part of the afternoon cleaning up the yard,
and currently violating the burn band. I actually surprised the fire department didn't show up,
because I burnt a foam mattress cover. You know when I was thinking, okay, it'll
just got a small burn smoke, and that thing might turn into a fucking mushroom cloud like the
second I threw it on the fire. It was insane. Okay, I'm expecting something to happen here.
I might not have used enough solution, but that's the part of a trial and error.
If it looks like I need to add about twice the amount of solution, then I added this time.
It's kind of hard. I mean, I should have started out with accurate measurements and done it all.
Scientific methods, fabulous. Then I would know exactly how much of X, how much of Y,
and how much of C would have needed. But it's more fun to experiment, I think, to do it this way.
I had our monomy of when I was in high school, my chemistry teacher actually let me make
gunpowder. Lacking the ancient Chinese formulas, I had to guess the appropriate mixture of
salt, Peter, charcoal, and sulfur. Okay, this is going to go hot quick.
Okay.
Check. Oh, shit. It's aimed straight up. There we go. That should work pretty good.
See if I'm going to scare the neighbors.
God damn. That was a fucking hang time. That thing was in the air for a good couple of seconds.
Well, I think we are well on the way to success here. So since I put a unscrupulous bottom,
I should be able to extract the charge without dumping it. That bottle is long gone, long freaking
gone. Okay, so I do know I just, since I have measured out for the most part what I'm using,
I now know pretty much exactly how much stuff I need to mix together. Now it's pretty nice.
Now it could be that with the change in angle, see it worked really well at a vertical angle. I mean,
I didn't even see where the fucking thing went. I mean, the bottle must have been like,
must have gone up like 40 feet or something. Shit, I don't even know. I mean,
I thought it had misfired because I didn't hear the thing. I didn't see the thing anywhere.
So it must have gone up over the trees and landed like 150 feet into the woods because I didn't
even see it here. All I did was hear a thunk out there somewhere and I have no idea where. I've
been the habit now of pre-preparing that way it doesn't take so long to record the show here.
So I've got most of my stuff ready to go. Ready to just add water. Oh, systems check.
One charge, one projectile, one tube. Okay, everything is just about ready to go. Just
get a camera and head water. It should be that easy. But I found nothing is ever
ever easy. Yeah, we got a hell of a windstorm.
Half the counties in the state have some kind of fire in them. The governor declared a state
of emergency and called out the National Guard to help out. Okay, here we go. Check
there for water. Check. I kept it and go on. That's not going to work. That one's going to be a dud.
The cap got cross threaded. Like I said, what can go wrong? Well now we know. Now we know what can
go wrong. So try again. New charge. It's going to pop. It's going to pop. It's going to pop.
No, not. It's probably just going to steam a whole lot. One of these people looking. Oh, great.
The lady next door is. Oh, now I've got an audience. Trim into not glass, not glass, not glass.
Well, it's time I'm going to be more careful when I put the top on. Okay. Top of something good.
Charges in. Second charge is in lightly. First, I'm going to do from the hip. Any second now.
Here comes the car. Great. Nice. Success. We have explosive. Listen to that.
Poisonous toxic chemical reaction. Hi. Okay. Well, they did not go quite as far as I had expected. Let's
see. Let me stop the camera. And that will be the end of demo. Number one. Successfully completed.
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net. So head on over to

96
hpr_transcripts/hpr0038.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
Episode: 38
Title: HPR0038: R4DS Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0038/hpr0038.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:38:16
---
1
Hello everybody, I am Stankdog and this is Hacker Public Radio.
On today's episode we're going to do a little bit of a hardware review of a device that
I purchased recently. It's something called the R4DS. It is a pass-through device or an adapter for the Nintendo Game Boy DS.
And I thought I'd do a little mini review, talk about some of the pros and cons of it on the show tonight.
So, first of all, let's talk about what the whole point of this thing is. If anybody doesn't know listening to the show what a Nintendo DS is,
it is a handheld gaming device made by, obviously, Nintendo. It's got two screens on it, a touch screen at the bottom and a second screen at the top.
It was made to be backwards compatible with Game Boy Advance games, which is kind of handy.
And, of course, new Nintendo DS games, which you probably see in just about every story you walk into.
Well, I happen to travel a lot for my job, so I purchased one of these a couple years ago and it's been pretty cool.
But I always kind of thought it might be neat to have other applications on there, kind of wonder what kind of power was behind it.
I know that immediately when it was released, some people began trying to port Linux over to it.
And, there became, there popped up, I should say, a community of Nintendo DS homebrew programmers, homebrew meaning people who are actually writing applications for the Nintendo DS environment.
So, I thought that was kind of cool. People are making not only their own games, but other applications like personal information managers, media players, software of view, images on your Nintendo DS, etc. etc.
These are all things that, you know, they're neat. It's kind of a nice little trick and everything, but to be quite frank, the early versions, the early ways to get this to work on your Nintendo DS, like a lot of other console hacking, involved taking your machines apart, maybe not necessarily for the DS, but for the Xbox and others.
You always end up having to take it apart, go soldering a bunch of things. So, the early generations were rough and required a lot of steps to actually get into the meat and potatoes of the machine.
Well, that's not the case anymore, and that's why I finally broke down and got into the homebrew community, if you will.
There's been a few devices lately, and the one I mentioned earlier that I purchased the R4DS is one of those devices. It's what they call a slot one flash kit.
And slot one would be the slot in the back of the Nintendo DS, where Nintendo DS cards are just slide in. They're very small. Anybody that has one knows that they're just a little bit bigger than an SD card. They're not a standard SD or compact flash or anything like that. They're proprietary form, proprietary shape.
And an SD card in and of itself will not fit in there cleanly. Nintendo DS games, those are games designed specifically for this console, go in the back and slot one, Game Boy Advance games, as I mentioned the backwards compatibility earlier, go in the front, which is called slot two.
And I'm talking about the latest hardware, maybe earlier versions had those reversed, but they're still called and referred to slot one and slot two.
So this new generation of devices, the R4DS specifically, is a very, very straightforward and easy way to run homebrew applications on your Nintendo DS as a slot one pass through the device.
Basically what you get when you order this kit, and I ordered mine from a place called Deal Extreme, which is really just the middle man it ends up getting shipped from Hong Kong.
So got it a couple of weeks after I ordered it from Hong Kong. It's been pretty high demand right now actually for I believe it was somewhere around, somewhere around $40.
You can probably find for less than 50 bucks, maybe a lot less if you shop around, but I think I've paid about 40 bucks for it.
And what you get when you order it is a box that contains a couple things.
First of all, it contains the slot one device itself.
Basically this looks like any Nintendo DS game you would buy off the shelf.
And it is, again that thing I described earlier looks kind of like an SD card.
It is a card. Now there's nothing on the card. There's no games on the card. It is basically exactly what it sounds like a pass through device.
This device slides into there, but the part that makes it really useful is the fact that as a pass through device what it does is it allows you to put this card inside your Nintendo DS, but it's got a small opening in the back.
And in the back of the device itself, you can slide in a micro SD card.
So the micro SD card is readable by most computer systems or a lot of other systems.
We all know that that is definitely a standard. And that leads to the second thing that comes with the kit when you buy.
Of course this is not a very depending on where you purchase it, but the second thing is that it does come with a micro SD card.
DS SD can get confusing micro SD card. I went ahead in order to 2GB and I got to say it filled up a lot faster than I thought it would to be honest with you.
Obviously you can buy as large as you think you might need and you will need a way to get data onto that through your computer.
If your computer already has a slot for the micro SD card or if you have an adapter for a micro SD to a full size SD card, which most of them come with that, you can in a card reader on your computer, you can interface it that way.
Or with the kit that I purchased, I actually got a USB adapter so I could plug the USB into the computer and the micro SD card in the other side of that so I could write directly to it as a mini flash drive.
So already that seems like a pretty good deal to me, 2GB drive, 2GB micro SD card, excuse me, with the adapter. That alone to me is worth probably $30 to $40. That's pretty handy to have.
But it also comes with a CD and a little bit of a manual. You might as well throw the manual to the side because it's very bad English.
It's kind of hard to read and understand so I found that was pretty much useless. The CD that it comes with is also equally confusing.
But what I did and what anybody probably listening, this probably does when they buy any new hardware is go to the website first of all and see if there's an updated version of that anyway.
By the time they package and burn those CDs and ship those out, they probably made updates to this software anyway.
So I went to the website, downloaded the latest version, threw that onto the card.
And basically what it is is there's a certain directory structure that have a certain naming convention where it puts on what we're going to refer to as a bootloader.
And since they figured out how to make this happen through slot one, all you have to do is load the bootloader with the proper naming conventions, everything on to your micro SD card.
Slide it into the adapter and that whole combination into your Nintendo DS and boot.
And what it'll do is it will kind of bypass the Nintendo DS is built in a boot system and load directly from the card and present you with a menu.
And the menu is also very equally simple. It does support the touch screen and everything's working and acknowledges the hardware and everything.
And it has three options, one called gains, one for home brew applications and one that actually brings up kind of a miniature shell.
Basically they're pretty self explanatory, the first one gains since you have this device in the slot, you obviously can't have another game in there at the same time.
And I'm going to just put a disclaimer out here, I do not know the legalities of this, so we're going to speak hypothetically at this point.
You can find, when this is just a fact, you can find ROMs of lots of Nintendo DS, Game Boy and pretty much any other console game outside of this conversation.
But you can find ROMs for just about any Nintendo DS game out there on the interwebs, somewhere out there in the tubes.
So you can find the games that you own, for example, I own seven or eight games for the Nintendo DS.
And I don't like carrying them around with me everywhere that I go. So it's kind of handy to have the ability to put all those ROMs onto one SD card, of course that I legally own hypothetically.
And pop those in and have all the games in my disposal without having to swap cards in and out all the time.
So that's another cool thing that's happened in the later versions here. Some of the very early versions of these would allow you to do similar functionality, but you had no way really to save the games.
So that's one, first of all, one thing to point out about this device, as we begin more of a review here, is that it will allow you to save games that create your save games in the directory where the game is and it puts you as a .sad file, a save file.
So the cool thing about that is you can have all the games that you want on the device and the game ROMs usually end in a .nDS, obviously from Nintendo DS extension, but it will put the save game files on there.
And it gives you the neat option if you wanted to back those up to your hard drive or to a CD or whatever else if you're with one of those people that does like to save your save games.
And if it's a game that takes a long time to play, you don't want to risk ever losing it or, you know, the other, if you did actually have the original ROM and you lost it, your save game is stored on that little ROM cards.
So if you were to lose your game, you've lost your save game, you'd have to start back over after you bought the new game. Well, by allowing this, you can have those save games and back them up and reload them as you see fit. So that's one neat thing.
Again, it's through a menu system. It'll allow you to choose whichever game it is you want to play and simply hit the button and it will load that game up as though you had booted directly from the ROM.
So you don't have to do a lot of weird things. You don't have to jump through who if you don't have to solder anything.
So this is the latest generation of devices. So if you ever have, ever have hesitated about purchasing such a thing, they are now as easy as I think they're ever really going to get.
What else is it does have some other features on there that don't really do anything for me, but some listeners might like to know that it has some sort of, I think it's action replay or something I believe the name of it was.
Honestly, I bypassed that because it wasn't interesting, but apparently that's some sort of system that allows you to cheat, put in cheat codes, pre-program in cheat codes.
So that every time you start the game, it'll automatically give you full help or something like that, different things.
So it does have support for that built into it, which is kind of neat if you're into that more than I have apparently.
And let's see, other homebrew games. There are lots of perfectly legal. Well, again, I'm not a lawyer, so I believe it's perfectly legal to put your own games on there.
It is open source. The community does release all the stuff open source. They don't like it charge people charging court. There's actually been some manufacturers from China that have been releasing devices and bundling a bunch of homebrew software on it and charging money.
And the homebrew community was not very happy with that. And they actually don't take very kindly to people who do that.
So that's not exactly the case with this one. This one just gives you the basic fundamentals you need.
There's a lot, it's a pretty surprisingly active community online about this. So you can go out and do a little bit of searching for Nintendo DS homebrew and Nintendo DS hackings, et cetera, et cetera, and find a lot of other things that you can do and a lot of homebrew applications and games that you can download.
The other thing, it does, it's worth pointing out that they've come so far now that there's no concern. There's nothing that I have found that this doesn't recognize as far as the hardware that includes the rumble pack.
I don't have one myself. I know the kids like a lot of the rumble pack that when you're fighting, you get shot. It actually shakes and vibrates in your hand. It does support that and acknowledge that memory pack. Any any of the plugins and stuff that has support for all of that.
It's pretty much complete product these days and you can actually change and I'm tinkering around with this pretty much as we speak. You can change the background and basically it's skinnable.
You can skin this thing if you do a little bit of reading online. It's just creating your graphics in the right format and file names because it's very particular about that.
And the right resolution and all that, you can actually make your own custom graphics and put on there. So you can fool your friends into thinking that you hacked it yourself and you didn't just download or didn't just buy something for $40 and change the colors on it.
You actually can probably fool most of your friends and make them think that you hacked your Nintendo DS and your own you own your puverly and all that kind of good stuff.
I think that's about it. I mentioned there's a shell which gives you some access. There is a Linux DS Linux. I think I should say, which is pretty handy. If you buy the kit, again, mine came from deal extreme.com. You could probably find them at a lot of other places. I'm not endorsing them necessarily but came fine. I got it in a reasonable amount of time. It was in good shape.
Came with three things like I said, the adapter itself, a micro SD card, two gigs in my case, and a USB adapter for the micro SD card, which you may or may not need if you have the card reader and an adapter already.
So that's pretty much it. If anybody has ever been hesitant about modding their Nintendo DS, you shouldn't have to worry about that anymore. It's gotten to the point where it's pretty much plug and play and even though the manual and the instructions and the website are all very bad English and not the most complete sentences or anything like that in the world.
It's pretty simple and self-explanatory and within about 10 or 15 minutes I had the whole thing together, loaded, running, and everything worked pretty fine. So you can pretty much figure it out. You guys are all smart people out there listening to the show. So thank you for listening to this episode of Hacker Public Radio and we will see you again tomorrow.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by Carro.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-T for all of us here.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.

92
hpr_transcripts/hpr0039.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
Episode: 39
Title: HPR0039: Debian Live CD
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0039/hpr0039.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:39:01
---
music
music
Hey, this is Oct 3 with another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm going to talk about Debian Life and the Debian Life Project.
Debian Life is a framework that is used to build life systems for the Debian distribution.
It can include the classic installer.
It can build CD-ROM, USB, and at boot images, all life systems.
It's a live project, but it's also used for making pre-built images.
And it also includes desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, XFICE.
And you can also install pretty much anything in the Debian repositories, including source code and drivers and kernels.
The features that I liked about this project was that you can include the Debian installer from the official release onto your live system.
And you can create a live CD with the installer for your specific setup.
Let's say you have a computer laptop that has bad Wi-Fi cards for Linux.
You can install that onto your live system.
You have the installer copied over when it creates your hard drive.
You can also include raid drivers.
Anything that you'd like and anything you can compile and run in Linux, you can put on your live system.
Also, the other thing you can include are encrypted hard drives disks into your live system installer.
Or you can encrypt the live system itself when it boots.
Whereas a password, and you can keep private files on it.
It supports DM-CRIPT, loop AES, and encrypted volumes.
And the encrypted volumes are for hard drive installation, obviously.
And the next thing that I liked about this project was that it boots by Net Boot or Web Boot.
Net Boot is booting your system from a remote location, whereas Web Boot is grabbing your boot system from a remote location and booting it locally.
The advantage of Net Boot is you don't have to have hard drive Web Boot is.
You don't need an internet connection after the initial boot.
The next thing that I liked was you can create a Zen system using Zen kernels from the Debian repositories.
Basically, anything that you would need supported by Debian that you can get to copy over to the disk and that will obviously be able to run from a live CD will work.
Now that I've described basically the advantage of every live CD project out there, I'm going to explain the advantage of using the Debian live project.
Dev is built around a framework for a standard set of options to build a default live system.
You can also use various customizations for your live system with an automated tool that hooks into the Debian live framework.
This tool is called Live Helper, and it comes with a GUI.
It doesn't come with a GUI, but you can get the GUI quite easily. It's called Live Magic.
The advantage of using this tool is that you can run through a set of options that you can find in the Man page.
Basically, what you would do is you would run the config script and the build command.
The config script basically sets a bunch of options in various config files and standardizes the build and then you run the build command.
If you wanted to get into really customizing your build process, what you would do is you would run the configuration script.
After that, you would bootstrap Che root through the accompanying Che root scripts and then Che root you were directory.
After that, you can do pretty much anything you would if you were building manually.
I think you would run your remove on all your Che root scripts and run your LH underscore binary script.
If you have a good CD, change the name, move it to another directory, and then clean it with the clean command and your set.
The thing about Debian Live is that it is highly configurable. You can specify as much as what mirrors you use during the bootstrap as well as the binary process.
You can specify the security mirrors or bootstrap and binary, meaning bootstrap as when it builds the system and binary as when it is using packages.
For the actual system, you are going to be booting up for the ISO is generated.
You can specify your own repository in this manner. You can also specify your own packages and packages list.
You can include any piece of software that you have been able to create into a binary or RPM if you have RPM installed onto your Debian system.
I just entirely suggested that you use all Debian packages as this is a Debian system.
The advantage is easy and you can also specify different build options as in the USB.
I have used it many times, the USB stick. You do it in the same way as building a live CD, except for you just have to specify the dash B, USB dash HDD command.
It is a little confusing, but once you see the help on the main page, it is very simple to specify.
It is a little bit harder to build a live USB stick because the process is complicated because of the fact that it is on a USB stick.
Aside from building with the live helper utility, you can include the GUI, which is very similar to what the Debian installer looks like.
It does all the same options. It is just a little bit buggy because it is behind the development process of live helper for reasons unknown to me.
It still works and you just have to make sure that you get the latest version from their Git Repositories and it works just fine.
What I have used the live helper utility for and the Debian has been very supportive is for building live rescue disk for work.
It works quite well to be able to rebuild a disk with a new tool on the fly or update the system and you can also build live USB sticks.
As I mentioned, you can put it from DVD CD so if you are using a rescue disk, you can bring it with you, your live USB, your CD ROM, your DVD ROM.
You can install to an SD card if you have to. It is a little bit more complicated but you can.
I had created a SD card installation for my ASUS triple EPC of a live CD that I had generated with all they create.
The necessary drivers and such patch kernel for the ASUS that comes with these Android OS.
At this point I am going to talk about what I have been doing with the Debian live utilities.
I am going to be trying to build a Debian from scratch live CD and so far I have a base system that boots from an ASUS on a CD ROM.
I am trying to add in a way to the system from scratch out of the live helper utility.
Simply add in another module of some sort that will hook into live helper and be able to be called from an option at command line.
Right now I have created a development environment that I can use to create same builds, destroy back up.
I have done this using the OpenVZ virtual private server software.
Also known as a VirtualOzo.
What I ended up doing was I created a VPS for a Debian mirror to download the official repositories.
Then I created a second one where I could pull the sources of certain packages that I would be bootstrapping my system with.
I compiled them all, destroyed my year from the official packages, pulled up a smear and created one out of the packages I had compiled.
After that I started building my live systems with Debian packages that I had compiled with all the items I needed.
Now I am in the process of putting a GUI with XORG and I am deciding on what window manager to use.
At that point I have a working system with a GUI and a few tools.
Then I will probably start working on the automated tool of helper and throw in my ID code and quite possibly submit it to their project.
If they don't like it either way I have pretty much done what I wanted to do.
The plan is to include the Enlightenment 17 window manager.
The problem is that it is the best way to build it as I was told by the e-developers was that I need to get the Nightly CVS build and compile it and then keep those packages that I create from that source.
Keep it handy for a month as I was told the CVS builds can be very unstable for e-17.
So I might in the meantime probably keep something like fluxbox or window manager 2 or something of that sort that is very lightweight window manager that I can repetitively recompile very simply.
And that is pretty much it for my podcast.
I am probably going to go to sleep now. I hope you enjoyed my recording and have a great day.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O.N-E-T for all of us in need.
Thank you.

115
hpr_transcripts/hpr0040.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
Episode: 40
Title: HPR0040: Sys internals Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0040/hpr0040.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:39:24
---
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I'm Zoke on IRC and I'm going to talk to you about the system tunnel suite.
Used to be done by an independent company and now it got bought out by Microsoft so you
may want to read the eulers very carefully.
First programs in the system tunnel suite, I'm just going to go through some of them.
You can go and google for them.
Some of the main programs that I used to use at work and I think you'll find quite useful.
So runs, this basically gives you a list of every program that automatically runs.
It's quite good in the fact that it does search the startup folders, the registry keys,
both the local machine and local user and a bunch of other places I'd never heard of.
It gives you an option to remove all of them, you can go through and rip any of the crap
that's on a machine out.
This also includes a lot of the spyware you can look like to hide itself in odd places
you can remove all that and clear up machines pretty well.
Next up we have BG info, this puts text on the desktop.
Yeah, exciting, isn't it?
You can put the IP address, version info, specific build, numbers and stuff.
We use it on the test machine so you can see what they were running.
Blue screen, screens over the emulates, blue screen or death, you're going to have that
just for putting on a friend's computer and watching them freak out as it blue screens
on them.
Filemon, short for filemonitor, this will monitor your files and show you what's accessing
them.
It's pretty much real time, it's going to take a fraction of a second touch, show on screen.
Basically you can run filemon and then you have to do is remove or filter all the hard drive
access that Windows does, which is a lot.
Your antivirus is going to be in there, if you've got a file wall that's going to be in
there.
Windows itself opens a ton of files all the time.
So you can just right lock on them and filter and remove them.
But then you run the program that you're going to install, watch it install and it will
show you exactly what it's installing where, which is very cool and useful.
Handle shows the open files, any file handles that you have open on your system.
So all the open files basically, that can be called to see what's got, what open, where,
there's DLLs, there's DLLs, funnily enough, this can be cool if you've got DLL issues.
A rather annoying problem we had at work was we had most of visual studio and then we
had the crystal reports, sports separately.
The version that came with visual basic was a very cut down crappy version of the full
blame version of crystal reports, but it had a higher number on the DLL.
So when we installed it, the program we used for rolling out all the software looked
at it and thought higher number, installed that one and ended up breaking half the stuff.
Things that Lissie allows will show you what open DLLs are on your system and you can
check the version numbers from there.
Log on sessions shows any logged on users on your machine.
It's very useful to see if someone's logged into your machine remotely.
For example, trying to do something like opening your CD-ROM drive, don't ask, there is
a story behind that though.
The HD-Frag will defrag a page file, that's what it says on the can basically, set it
to a D-Frag on next reboot and reboot pretty much simple.
Process Explorer, it's a very cool utility, it shows you what DLLs and any other things
are being called by a program, so you select the program and then you can see exactly
what it's calling.
So if you're looking for missing DLLs, you can see what the program is looking for and
specifically which calls in there.
Now we come to the PS Tools Suite which is one of the most useful bits in my mind anyway.
If for nothing else for then just for annoying or co-workers, you can download the entire
suite but there are various bits inside there and I'll go through some of the main programs.
PSExec, this executes files remotely on another machine assuming you have permission.
At work we had local admin access on every single machine because we were the IT guys.
You can use it to remotely install and register the DLLs for example on another machine
which we were looking at to fix problems if they had DLL issues.
Alternatively you could just take over a co-workers machine and make Internet Explorer,
load up two girls, one cup or another website that Dan's told you about.
File will show you any open files on a local or remote machine, this could be quite useful
if you're trying to upgrade one of the files and you can't because someone's using it,
you can see why.
PSInfo shows you information about the local or remote machine.
PSKill will kill a running process on a local or remote machine.
Found this quite useful, a friend had a VMware session up and it crashed.
He was running it full screen, couldn't do anything else on the machine.
He phoned me up around PSKill, killed the process off from he got his machine back, managed
to save the word document he had open and another window hadn't saved.
PSList lists the running processes on a local or remote machine, this can be very useful
in debugging.
PS logged on shows who's logged on, finally enough.
PSService, you can list start or stop services, very useful for debugging or even hacking
a machine if you so desired and PS shutdown will make the machine shut down, finally enough.
So you can go and copy some stuff over, set up services up to be started, whatever from
to reboot and pretty much run anything you want from the machine remotely.
Reg1, very similar to File1, instead of monitoring files, they're Reg1, monitors the registry.
If you were so inclined you could find some shareware 30 day only program, run Reg1, run
the 30 day program in Stooler, watch what registry files it changed where, delete the registry
files, oh look you've got your 30 days back again.
Of course there's no real point nowadays, you just have a virtual machine to do it and
then you don't get any extra crap floating around on your machine.
Hey it's there anyway, Rukit Reveals 1, I'll probably be talking about in a later episode.
It's Reveals Rukits, the Sony DRM stuff came up and was found by this by Mark Rusnovich
or however you pronounce the surname, run it, see what differences it thinks between the
operating system and what's actually on the disk again, I'll talk more about that later.
Just realised I pretty much guarantee that I'm going to be doing at least one more episode.
That'll be it for this episode.
In my next episodes I'll actually have to be good into windows and we'll go through
some of the tools and some of the actual options you can do.
Thank you very much for listening and if anyone wants to catch up on me, I'm normally
on the IRC in the 3.0.net in the Ash Linux reality and Ash a lot of Linux links rooms.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for public radio, HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to CARO.NC for all

146
hpr_transcripts/hpr0041.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,146 @@
Episode: 41
Title: HPR0041: Codecs Part 3
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0041/hpr0041.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:39:59
---
Music
This is Hacker Public Radio. My name is Klaatu. I'm the host for today. This is
episode three of an in-depth series on Codex. In the previous episode we spoke
about compression which is as we found out in the first episode different from
Codex but very very closely related. The different variables in compression as
we learned in last episode are keyframes which is the number of eye frames or
intra frames per second. We learned about frame rates which we discovered are
perceptual not actual and they have everything to do with the perceived smoothness
of the motion on the screen and there is of course a bitrate. That's
important. Bitrate is the amount of information being sent from the source of
the video out to whatever it is being shown on whether it's a media player
on your computer or a TV via your DVD player or whatever. In this episode I want to talk
about Codex versus transport formats or container formats and how to distinguish one from the other
and then I want to get into a couple of the different Codex that are out there that
you and I get to deal with. Codex are delivered to us or rather video that has been encoded.
It is delivered to us in some kind of a file format of one sort or another.
The most common one I guess is probably either .avi or .mp4. Sometimes you'll see .mpg.
Of course you've got .mov.wmv. All these kinds of file formats that seem like that would be
the Codex right. A lot of people will ask what kind of video is it and someone will say oh it's
.avi which is basically like saying oh what kind of car is it. Oh it's an automobile. It's the
kind of video file but it has nothing to do with the Codex that is contained inside of that video
file. So how do we find out what Codex a file has actually been encoded in or with and what Codex
conversely it needs to be decoded by. The easiest way I guess is just to crack open either VLC
player or totem. Those are the two that I use most frequently VLC players really what I use
typically. You open the video up in that and you look at the information tab and it will tell you
what kind of stream the video it has been encoded in and it gives you a stream zero for the
typically as the video feed or the video stream and then there's if there's sound there'll be
another stream stream one that'll have the audio Codex as well and even a VLC can't play it for
some reason if it's just some obscure video then VLC in my experience still is able to see
what kind of Codex that video was encoded with you know it's just it's basically reading metadata
from that file even if it can't play it. Don't confuse the container with the Codex so now you know
there's no such thing as a .avi file there's also no such thing or there there is such a thing as a
.mp4 that is not that that is a .mp4 so mp4 sounds like mpeg4 right well that's what it is
but mpeg4 is peculiar because it's also a standard so you can actually have a .mp4 file that uses
the mpeg4 Codex and yet at the same time you could have another .mp4 file that was encoded with
say xvid or h.264 or something like that so you have to be kind of careful with with certain
container formats bottom line I guess is to open it up in VLC or totem or something like that
and just take a look in the in VLC it's in the information section and it just tells you the
different streams contained within that file which is very helpful so more more than trying to
decide like what Codex to use because one does one one thing better than another it's more about
which Codex you want to use legally and which and what settings you have set for your compression
so a lot of the burden is still on you as the compress or rather than the Codex which is simply
the method of compressing it that's a general statement but it's really is it holds to be true
a lot of times so there's there's two different things that we that we consider when we're thinking
about compressing video there's the video downloads or the DVDs or whatever those are typically
kind of nice because it's really kind of it's there's a limit just on the hardware in the software
for bitrate so you can kind of predict what you want to do for that streaming video that's hard
because there you don't know who is streaming who is receiving that data over what kind of connection
they're they're getting it the data needs to be compressed it needs to be sent needs to be received
and then reassembled and played live streaming is really hard because you've got video that's
being compressed on the fly and being sent somewhere and received and reassembled and think about
streaming for instance if I'm streaming video to someone and if if I have an iFrame or essentially
what would be an iFrame and I send that well what if that iFrame doesn't arrive for a second
but all the p in the bFrames do arrive well they're no good until that iFrame gets there and
that's what causes like those that weird kind of digital distortion or or or even the the digital
skipping of of the image when you're streaming video conferencing and things like that different
codex we'll talk about a couple of different ones there is a standard of codex for for video
there are a couple of standards I should say one of the most well-known is the standard that has
put forth by the motion picture experts group they gave themselves that name they're not necessarily
experts that's just what they call themselves motion picture experts group it's just a group
like any other group that defines a standard you know they don't have any authority innately they're
just making a lot of sales and they're making their products into standards so they came up with
the impact for to kind of as I understand it to unify all web video and stuff like that it didn't
work of course but it did it was accepted as a standard and so a lot of the come a lot of the codex
that have come since then try to adhere to the impact for a standard now the impact itself the
motion picture experts group itself also has I mean they're hardly an unbiased a society they have
they have a number of impact codex that they license out which is of course why none of us Linux
users can watch DVDs legally in most countries or maybe just the US I don't know you know it's all
because of that whole thing they they own the impact technology they license it out to certain
people and if you're buying your OS you are buying the license for the impact to format and if
you're not buying your OS then you're not paying for that impact license and so you don't get to
watch that stuff so luckily the the good the good kind of impact is impact for because at least it
is a standard and it is kind of nice for that the evil stuff impact one impact two those things
MP3 how could I forget that one impact three of course is an impact format so all that stuff
is owned and licensed out by the impact uh society itself okay so let's talk about a nice free
codec just get things started because that's always cheerful x-vid is an impact for compliant codec
so it does it adheres to the standard quite quite well and it's a good thing that it does because
it's actually it's really being adopted pretty well from what I can tell so it can be inside
again like a dot avi or a dot mp4 container um x-vid is free as in free and free it is basically
just it's a really good codec that aims toward compatibility it also has b-frame support so if
you're doing the whole i b p b p p p i thing you can do that with x-vid not all codecs are
going to support the b frames it also has a whole host of different pixel aspect ratio options
so they can do hd so this is a very very broad codec that can do a lot of stuff it's a really
nice one what does it lack not a whole lot not not a whole lot actually um it does not have
interactivity built into its into its specifications so if you were going to do a menu where you
wouldn't wouldn't want people to you know click on the screen to to choose i don't know the
the next chapter or whatever x-vid alone wouldn't be able to do that but there are plugins
that adds these kinds of features so there's really not not a whole lot that um that x-vid
doesn't do really now the the hot new codec on the block that is not free um is h.264 this did not
come from the in-peg society but it came from another society i don't remember it starts with a
v i don't remember the name of it but it's it's everyone's really excited about it right now it was
adopted by hd dvd and blu-ray as their format so instead of going with impact to uh it's actually
going more with h.264 the good news about that is that h.264 is in-peg for compliant so it would
be a lot easier for Linux people to be able to watch that because it's it's it's it's an open
standard or it's a it's a standard um that does not require licensing um so there's all there's
a codec out there right now called x.264 which is very similar in terms of trying to get around any
kind of licensing issues and legalities h.264 is kind of a good thing for for Linux users although
it's not a free or an open of codec by any means it is a pretty robust codec though
uh very similar to x.264 in the sense that it can do a very wide color space it can uh extend
itself according to what what it's going out to so if if you need there to be you know a very high
bitrate version for for for a big screen tv but then a lesser bitrate for standard definition or
something like that you can you can you have that kind of flexibility with h.264.
Divix a lot of people have heard of divix that is basically it's it's a it's another dvd spec
actually it's kind of a competitor in in a way to impact to although it's kind of a competitor
at the same time to impact for it it is impact for compliant as far as i know um it it does have
support for interactive menus and chapter points so it's a lot like the dvd spec in that sense
it's got x sub for sub titles has the ability to do multi audio multiple audio tracks so you can
switch between soundtracks uh and it has x tag for tags that are basically like id3 id3 tags for
np3 so it's it's kind of a it's a consumer video oriented codec that gives you you know if you
were a business and you wanted to license that you could do that and you would have those features
if you didn't want to license it from impact for like the impact to standard those are kind of the
big i guess consumer oriented codecs i mean obviously there are so many more windows media windows
media audio uh real real audio there's just so many there's there's three three ivx which actually
interestingly has codex for linux bos and amiga believe it or not uh there's huffy uv um there are
codex that avid has released there are codex that apple has released codex um well even dv like i
was saying in a previous episode dv is in addition to being a tape format that we tape video onto
it's also a form of compression because the video wouldn't fit on that tape if it weren't at
initially compressed so they would fit on the tape the business model of all of this
is quite clever i guess the typical way that these companies that just invent arbitrarily
invent these codex is that they they provide the consumer a free download so the consumer gets
to download for free the decoder the thing that will enable the consumer to consume the content
and so it seems like it's free it's it's very nice and friendly they're going to the big companies
and selling the companies this codex solution so that the company can use for instance real
to encode video in such a way that no one else can get to it you know so that's protecting their
content and the only way for someone to get to it is to get this free decoder and the decoder will
have whatever it needs to have whether it's advertisements that you have to sit through before
you can watch the content or whether it just simply cost the company that's encoding the content
more money to license that technology one of the big keys usually is trying to lock that content
in which is why impag 2 is completely unfriendly format you know it you can only you can see it but
you can't touch it you can never you can't really pull an impag 2 very easily and edit it you
usually have to transcode it first or if you can then some company somewhere has paid a lot of money
to license the ability to to edit that content so it's it's all based on who's paying what
amount of money for what ability you know to do what process to the video it's it's a huge business
we're going to get into even more codec dealers in the next episode and I'm saving it I thought
this might be the last one but I think I've run out of time so I will I will do one more episode
in which case we'll finish up some of the codex some of the more specialized codex and then of course
the great aug collection of codex and maybe I'll go into a little bit of a line command on how to
get something into aug thanks for listening this has been the hacker public radio thank you
for listening to hacker public radio hpr is sponsored by caro.net so head on over to caro.nc for all of the

78
hpr_transcripts/hpr0042.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
Episode: 42
Title: HPR0042: Zune Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0042/hpr0042.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:39:55
---
Welcome to another episode of HBR. I'm your host Enigma and today I will be
talking about a new little toy I got. It's a Zoom 30-Yig MP3 player, video MP3
player. I wanted to talk about the pros and cons of this versus the iPod and
before everybody yells at me for being a sellout and getting a Microsoft
product. The only reason that I purchased this was I got a good deal because I
recently bought a new laptop and I got a deal at Circus City with the
Zoom and the laptop. I think I got those soon for 80 bucks and it was like
price point was like 140. So I'll get started with the pros. The thing that
attracted me the most for this MP3 player was the large screen. It's got a
three-inch screen that's got a beautiful display and that's what first caught
my eye and the reason that I even asked about it. It also has a very easy
interface. The sync software is in my opinion a lot less annoying than the
iPods sync. I've had issues with the iPods sync on a Windows box all the
time in the past and the Zoom software I haven't had issues since it's a
Microsoft product I would hope I wouldn't. The price point for the 30-Yig
video iPod I believe is a little bit steeper than I think. I want to say it's
around 150 bucks. I got mine for 80 again. The normal price point is 140 so
they're about the same. The battery life I was actually impressed with I got
I've never actually clocked it on the video side but I get about 10 to 15
hours on the audio side and I've never really clocked it from you know
straight continuous play. It's been interrupted so I'm sure that it's not a
very good guide for that. Another nice feature is it has a wireless sync which
I was kind of impressed with. I still need to play around with it a little bit
but you can if you're within your home network you can specify your SSID and
your web or WPA key in the sync software and it'll automatically sync to your
computer that you have the whatever you specify is in its library so if you have
like a file server you can wirelessly sync to that file server. It's also got
a build-in FM radio and I found this kind of neat. I don't even know if the
iPod has this but you know if you want to listen to the radio you can. Another
feature that I haven't tested yet but I want to play around with is it's
compatible with the Windows Vista home premium and ultimate support for the
DVR codec which is their codec for their media center and you can record
movies or TV shows from your Windows media center with a TV tuner and
actually play it back on your zoom which I don't know how that actually
works so I want to play around with it and see see what I can get out of it. The
cons the software only works in Windows it doesn't have any wine support at
the moment in Linux and there's plenty of hacks out there for the iPod I
haven't found a lot for the zoom probably because it's you know Microsoft
product and it's proprietary and but if anybody knows of any cool hacks with
the zoom please let me know you can email me at the site or the feedback
link whatever because I'd really like to play around with this and the other
con is not enough codec support I'll go through the codex right now it
obviously supports WMA for video it supports mp3 for audio mp3 playlist
I'm sorry WMA with Windows Media Audio and WMV for the Windows Media video as I
said it supports the Windows Media Center DVR which is the dot DVR MS it
supports zoom playlist obviously it supports mp4 video it supports mp4 it
supports AC audio created with the ACLC audio codec m4a and m4b I've never
seen that codex so I don't know much about it but the zoom supports it and
that's about it so a lot of the codex like your DIVIX codex and that aren't
supported natively which means you would have to convert them to one of these
codex and then let the software or the zoom software sink it up it won't see
anything in your library in the zoom software that isn't in that isn't in
these codex so you would have to convert it and then stick it in the folder that's
your zoom library to get it to recognize to even sink to your zoom which I
think's a little bit of a downfall I think it should have a little bit more
support but again it's a Microsoft product so what can you expect all in all
I've been very happy with my zoom I don't do a lot of things with basically the
only thing I got for this mp3 player for was for audio listen to work and to
store you know hack TV and hack five and a couple of the podcasts pure
pronage a couple of podcasts that I or the video casts that I watch a lot so I
can watch them in the airport or watch them on the plane whatever I wanted to
it's got a very pretty screen so you can watch it for hours which I did like
most of the video iPods that I've seen or video mp3 players whatever you want to
call them have such a small screen that I but I really don't like but this one
has a nice big screen and I do enjoy it so that's all for today if anybody's
interested in contributing to pack a public radio please let me know we're
always in need of backup episodes and if you want to be a monthly host I'm sure
we can work something out in the rotation so email me at admin at
hackerpublicradio.org or if you have any comments about this show or any show
you know you loved it you hated it whatever you want to comment about please
email feedback at hackerpublicradio.org and have a nice day

68
hpr_transcripts/hpr0043.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
Episode: 43
Title: HPR0043: Docdroppers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0043/hpr0043.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:40:19
---
Who?
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Walt Herbert, and I'd like to talk just briefly the day about dockedroppers.
That's www.docdropeprs.org.
The site was set up as a wiki of the digital dog pound to not only function as a repository,
but also to showcase hacking-related information.
Of course, the site is primarily for the community, but as a public web page, it's also serving
as an ambassadorial page to those who may be researching hacking in its culture.
The articles range anywhere from programming tutorials to caffeine.
The content is inclusive of anything and everything related to hacking really.
Amongst articles on freaking Linux how-tos and custom antennas, you'll also find some
more obscure articles.
For example, bios of some not so famous, but just as noteworthy hackers, social engineering
techniques, and even military jamming procedures.
It's all there, and more is always welcome.
If you're just stopping by to check out the page, I would recommend using the random page
link on the navigation menu.
Hopefully you'll stumble upon something that you may not have even realized is of interest
to you.
Microsoft is contributed to and maintained by members of the community.
Over the years, there have been so many contributors that would be impossible to thank everyone
in the time allotted.
This however, by no means diminishes the gratitude or appreciation of everyone's efforts.
Anyone who wishes to contribute an article, regardless of which particular community you
may belong to, if any, may do so by simply registering at www.doctroppers.org and following
the directions on how to submit in the health section.
Word to the Y-zo, please do register as MediaWiki, while otherwise display your IP address.
Doctroppers is a not-for-profit page, so you may choose your work to be licensed under
the appropriate canal or a Creative Commons license.
This is done simply by tagging the end of the article.
You need not worry if the essay that you wrote for class or the manual you wrote for your
co-workers is appropriate for the site or not.
It's an edited site, so in the event that something is not quite appropriate, it will
simply be removed.
So there is no risk in submitting.
As mentioned before, the site employs MediaWiki, and because articles may be revised by multiple
persons and in some cases outright corrected, there is a degree of assurance as to the
integrity of content.
If you're just beginning to explore the hacking world, much like myself, I'm sure you can
appreciate the importance of accurate information.
The MediaWiki set up also allows articles to be easily searchable as well as categorized,
and this is especially useful if you're looking for information on specific subject matter
in a hurry.
As of late, doctroppers.org has also been functioning as a sanctuary of sorts.
There are some people on Wikipedia who have been somewhat, and let's just say they've
been somewhat over-revisionist in their views of what is notable enough to be considered
a Wikipedia article and what is not.
Apparently, a large amount of hacking history is not notable.
And at time when the common media is tarnishing the meaning and history of hacking, to have
the positive aspects emitted from a repository like Wikipedia is especially disheartening,
the rejected articles must be preserved.
So rather than battling for consensus, we've simply been moving articles over to doctroppers
one by one.
If you would like to help in this process, there are also detailed instructions in the
doctroppers help section.
Regardless of your contribution, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
And speaking of contributions to the community, if you would like to record your own episode
of HPR, you may do so by visiting www.packerpublicradio.org and clicking on the link that says contribute.
Thank you for listening and have a good day.
Thank you for listening to Hack Republic Radio, HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on
over to C-A-R-O dot-E-C for all of us in need.

201
hpr_transcripts/hpr0044.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,201 @@
Episode: 44
Title: HPR0044: My desktop, and the apps I use everyday
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0044/hpr0044.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:41:30
---
Music
This is Hacker Public Radio and my name is Dave and in today's episode I am going to
be talking about something near and dear to my heart and that is my desktop, my computer
desktop specifically, my everyday computer, my laptop, the one that gets 95 to 99 percent
of my away from work, computer usage, and I want to talk about the applications, the
desktop applications that I use every day, the ones I cannot live without, the ones that
are there when I need them, or there when I am not even thinking about them, the ones
I use all the time I guess I should say, and these will be in no certain order and they
will also be very short on the how to part of it and how to make these things work,
there will be more what they do, some of these you have probably heard of maybe hopefully
a lot of something you have or some of them you have it, they are all relatively common.
I will talk about the most common one first and most briefly and that is Mozilla Firefox.
Almost everybody uses this browser now, everybody that knows anything about browsers will
use Firefox, and I guess specifically I am a heavy Firefox browser user, I have had
up to well over 150 tabs up at one time, there are better ways to surf the web than that
I am sure, but so I make heavy use of the tab mix plus extension and also heavy use
of the Google Notebook extension, those are the two I seem to use the most, that is all
I will say about web browsers, well except this as far as email goes, I am relying more
and more on Gmail for domains, it is like having your, letting Google host your email server
not for the paranoid I am sure, but either way I find myself using Mozilla Thunderbird less
and less every day, I guess my desktop is what I am talking about next, I use FluxBox,
I use FluxBox because FluxBox is everything I need in a window manager, it is not a desktop
environment, FluxBox does not come with any applications that do anything, but desktop
manager kind of stuff, window manager kind of stuff I should say excuse me, comes with
iconbar, it comes with a root menu and it comes with a desktop slit which is an invisible
invisible portion of the desktop where you can put dock apps or you can dock GKRILM which
is a system monitor tool that I will talk about briefly, so that is my desktop I use FluxBox
and I can't, I have used just about every window manager or desktop environment there
is over the last 13 or 14 years for Linux, I will not get into that history but FluxBox
is where I have landed and have stayed probably the longest, like I said it does exactly
what I need, it manages my windows, it has an iconbar or it has got a clock, that is about
all I need, the best part to me about FluxBox, as good as it being lightweight, right there
with that is the root menu, it is a simple text file and it is zero earning curve, if you
can read you can edit this thing and make your root menu be exactly what you want it to
be, it is heavily themeable, there are lots and lots of themes for FluxBox and keyboard
shortcuts are also very easily done, again with this a text configuration file, Blossom
BLOSXOM is the blogging software I use, I have not talked about Blossom in a long time
on any kind of recorded, or even really think about it much because I use it every day
and I set it up a long time ago and I just don't think about it anymore, Blossom is a
pro script that is also blogging software and Blossom will allow you to do almost everything
you can do with a traditional blog application and a little bit more, it does not limit
you really, but it is a simple blog and you blog using your favorite text editor, you
can blog over SSH Connection, I use VIM and SSH to blog remotely and it is really customizable
and really lean and it is just a text editor's lovers blog application I guess you would
say, if you don't want to use the web application to blog, if you are going to be able to blog
anywhere you are, this is for VIM and blog away, I really, really like Blossom, it is easy
to set up, there are lots of modules you can add, it is a simple application that does one
thing and does it really well, so if you are looking for some blog software that is pretty
lightweight and very lightweight and beautiful in this application, check out Blossom.
I mentioned SSH, SSH is the secure shell and most of you know what it is, but this is one of those
applications that I cannot live without if I go on vacation or if I am at work or if I am away
from my laptop or other computers at home, I begin to miss them, I have been known to carry photos
of my computers with me, I have been known to hang them in my cubicle, I am not really that attached
to them as much as it is, I like to look at them some, but I don't know what I would do without
SSH, being able to log into my computers remotely is, brings me great joy, so SSH is really
cool too, I host my web server off a home DSL connection, a computer in my five year old
daughter's bedroom, used to be my computer room, Mr. Bedroom now, that is why I left the server,
the rest of the computer to move those stairs, but when it goes down which DSL is like to do sometimes,
I want to do, I often times, well it is a DSL down I can't, but if there is something I need to do,
if there is something I need to get, there is something I need to tweak, SSH allows me to do this,
and SSH is good for port forwarding and getting around firewalls too, occasionally,
along with SSH, I should mention SSHFS, Secure Shell file system and the Fuse module, Fuse package,
I guess it is a Fuse kernel module, file system and user space, and the fish protocol,
I use all three of these things together, SSHFS specifically to mount my music directory,
my music server upstairs, I can mount this remotely via SSHFS anywhere in the world if I wanted to,
I can mount it on from any of the computers, so I have access to that music wherever I'm at,
there is another way to do that which I will talk about shortly as well, Fuse is used along with SSHFS,
it allows you to mount locally those file system over SSH, which is pretty cool, so if I am using my
favorite file manager, email FM2, I can use SSHFS to mount a file system on another computer
in my own network via SSHFS, and fish is a protocol that is built into the conqueror web browser
that allows you to do the same thing, I am not going to get into how to use Fuse and Fuse and SSHFS,
it is not that hard, but fish and conqueror allows you drag and drop access across file systems
over SSHFS, which is really cool, lots of times you can just do this stuff and I do this stuff
over the command lines, sometimes I use email FM2, but if I am managing files, actually moving stuff
around like when I do a podcast and I want to archive or move the current project folder that I
just, the episode folder I just worked on to another machine, it's easy to drag and drop and
and move media files around specifically using fish, let's see, other problems that I use on a
database is storm siring, now you may not have heard of this one, this is a Python script I think,
and there's no one of those problems that I want you to set up, you will forget about,
but you will be glad it's there, if you live in an area of the country similar to the one I live in,
I live in an area of the country that is prone to thunderstorms and occasional tornadoes,
and storm siring is a program, it's just a little script that runs, you can figure it by telling it,
what county you live in, what state you live in, what counties you want to keep up with as far
as weather alerts go, and storm siring will send you an email or a SMS message via your cell phone
whenever there is a national weather service, weather warning, I'm a bit of a weather geek and I like
having a phone call whenever there is a storm warning, I just like knowing that stuff, so storm
siring is really cool, let me go back to fluxbox real quick, one thing I forgot to mention is I've
been using the same fluxbox theme probably for at least two years maybe three years, now I found
when I really like a lot and it's called, it's hard to pronounce, new wave attack, and the E
in tech is a, is it the number three dash glacier, so it's a new wave attack, dash glacier,
and you can find this, if you just Google Clowner wallpapers, you will find, I think it's
it dugnet.org or something like that, but you'll find Clowner's website and he has some fluxbox
themes there, and that is when I really like a lot, and if you'll sit the alpha transparency around
145, for everything you can, menus, icon bar stuff like that, it looks really nice, it's a black and
blue thing, like I said if you sit the transparency, about 145, and you have like a blue desktop
background, this thing is this sharp looking, I've not grown tired of it after two and a half years,
I like it a lot, it's beautiful, I think I was talking about screen, screen is sort of a console
based, window manager, most of you probably already use screen, but screen with SSHFS
allows me to, from worker, from wherever I am, simultaneously log into all eight of my computers,
remotely, and that is just cool, I don't care who you are, that's cool, if you can log into
eight computers simultaneously, that's cool, and theoretically you can compile and start a
kernel compile on all eight of them, and then detach the screen and come back later,
that's just like power, I like that, GK-R-E-L-L-E-M2, I don't know, I can't remember there's a
two behind it, this probably has been around a while too, and it is a desktop system monitor,
and I do not use it in a traditional sense, I put it, this is not so novel or non-traditional,
but I put it in the bucket in the fluxbox slit, most people do that if they run fluxbox,
but I don't run any of the system monitor tools that come with GK-R-E-L-L-M, none of
all, the only thing I use it for is I use a plug-in called Garellacam GK-R-E-L-M-K-A-N,
K-A-E-M, Garellacam, I may be spending it wrong, that's house pronounce, and it is a webcam plug-in,
and it will monitor and update up to five and make an air quotes, webcams, and these,
I use it not to monitor webcams, but I use it to monitor images that change on a periodic
basis, and you can set the pole period, the pole time, how often you want it to update these images,
so I have it set, for instance, to grab the Doppler radar image from my local television station,
some radar images or satellite images from National Weather Service,
front maps, stuff like all weather-related images, and I have this plug-in update the image,
I think like every five minutes or something, and you can like middle-click on it to do an automatic
update, so if you like having something like that at your mouse-click fingertips, that's nice,
and I used to use, I forget the name of the other plug-in I used, so I won't talk about it,
I forget about it, but I don't use it anymore, I mentioned E-M-E-L-F-M-2 and conquerer both briefly,
E-M-L-F-M-2 is my favorite file manager, it is a two-paint GTK-2-based file manager that is based,
I'll roughly based off of E-M-L-F-M, the first iteration of this, the GTK-1 version of the
file manager has been around a long time, E-M-L-F-M-2 is GTK-2-based, and it's a two-paint file manager,
I think Mid-Night Commanders have GTK-2-based, and much, much more configurable, it's really nice,
it does just about everything you need, there's some things that doesn't do very well, but it's nice,
I've been using it a long time, and for a quick and dirty moving of files around, it's nice,
I like Mid-Night Commanders 2, I use it occasionally, but E-M-L-F-M-2 is one of those applications that's
almost always open on my desktop, it is always open, and the other is Cochra, Cochra, I use only
as a web browser, excuse me, I do not use it as a web browser, I use only as a file manager,
and specifically only for the fish protocol to move files and directories across different
computers on my network, and Cochra is, this works wonderfully for that, for that,
VIM, I've mentioned also briefly, VIM, if you use Linux at all, I mean for any length of time,
you're going to have to get familiar with the text editor, the first one I ever used with E-Max,
I used it for a couple of years, and I used XE-Max, and but a long time ago, I don't know when it was,
probably 9 or 10 years ago, I switched to VR or VIM, and haven't gone back since, it's good to know
all of them, or be basically familiar with all of them, because you don't know where you're going to
get, VIM is probably on all of them, E-Max seems to be sort of less common these days, but
you know it's Pico and Nano, but VIM is just the best, it's a wonderful program, and I'm
preaching to the choir because most of you have already heard of it as well. Another program I use,
almost every day, well not almost, I use at least once or twice a week seems like is List
Garden, and I use this to edit and create RSS feeds, or XML files for RSS feeds for the podcast,
for my podcast, for the E-Club podcast, for HPR, and it is a Java-based RSS feed generator,
and it does it very well, I forget the guy who developed it, I forget the name of the website,
and I forget some of the other applications he's done, but you can Google List Garden,
and when I first started doing my podcast in December 2005, I've never seen XML files, but I've
never created one, and it's not something that I really wanted to do by hand, as you do add
episode, you can become tedious, and List Garden was the first program I used, and it's the only
one I've ever used since then, it's really nice and allows you to create RSS feeds from a number of
things, I mean you can create RSS feeds, there's a lot of options, like I said it's web-based,
it's Java-based, it's cross-platform, it's portable, you can put this on a thumb drive,
it's just really nice, and you have to use it and see it to appreciate it, but there are
lots of options in here to tailor make the RSS feed to your needs or liking, and it's not just
far podcast, you can turn static HTML pages into RSS feeds if you want to, check out List Garden
if you need something like that, Easy Tag is one I use some, because I'm not taking the time to
find out, another way to do tagging of MP3 and org files, but there are lots of different ways
to do this, including command line ways, audacity is the other one that I probably couldn't live without
being a podcaster, and one last one I want to talk about is MPD, the music player name,
the music player name is a program that allows you to access music files remotely using a client,
and it's also a really good desktop or local music player, what it does, I'm not going to get into
the how-tos and why-tos and all that, but it runs as a Damon, you put it on your music server,
on a computer where all your music files are, then you create a database, and then it's going to
load the database, you're going to issue a command, MPD, space, dash, create, DB, and it's going to
load the database into memory, and it takes up very little memory, this thing's very lightweight,
you won't even know it's running, I mean it may take up one or two megabytes of your memory,
and then you need a client to connect to it, and there's lots of clients, there's command line
clients, there's window-based clients, OSX-based clients, there's GTK and KDE-based clients,
I use mainly MPC, it's a music player-damer client for the command line, and I use Sonata,
which is a desktop GTK-based application, and configuring MPD isn't hard, it's not,
dropped it simple, I mean it seems like you always find foreign posts about people that have
gotten stuck, but it's not hard at all, there's a small less one configuration file,
and it's in your home directory is .mpd.conf, I think, or if you want to say it globally,
it's in atcmpd.conf, and it's pretty easy to say, it goes up a port, it normally runs on port,
6600, you need to set up your music directory, and you need to tell it where to put,
any music director's wherever it is, but you need to tell it also where to put the playlist
directory, the database file, the log file and error file, those are normally capped in your
home directory in a hidden .mpd directory, and once you've got that set up,
and you fire up your client, whether it's console-based or not, and you just connect to the server,
you'll have to configure the client to tell it your server settings, but this is a really
neat program, I like it, I mainly, I use Sonata when I want to search for music, Sonata is a
GNOME-based graphical front-end client for .mpd, and it's really elegant, and it also plays streams.
Oh, .mpd will also allow you to stream your music to an oscast server, by the way, that's just
something you can figure in the config file, but mainly I use .mpc, and I have, in my Fluxbox
root menu, I have some custom launchers built in there, just a little bash grips, telling .mpc
what to do, I can load the playlist, I can skip to the next one, I can stop it, I can go forwards,
backwards, that pauls, that kind of thing, all from the Fluxbox root menu, I've assigned hot keys
in the Fluxbox keys file, and I use Conkey, mainly for just some kind of visual clue as to what
song is being played, so you know, it keeps Conkey running, but really the only thing I pay attention
to is what song is being played, if even that, so there in a nutshell is my Linux desktop,
I know a desktop screenshot would have probably been, just a little bit easier, but I like to talk
about Linux, and I like to talk about stuff on my desktop, and you know, desktops are labors
and I love my desktop, so, I hope you love it too, until tomorrow's HPR says they've signed it off,
at endim, right after Dave recorded this HPR episode, he realized that he forgot to mention a
couple of apps that he uses almost every day, not wanting to leave them out, I'll mention them here,
gftp, the ftp client, and xchat, the irc client, he was also wrong about the next HPR episode,
being tomorrow, it's not until monday, that is all, have a happy leap day!

122
hpr_transcripts/hpr0045.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
Episode: 45
Title: HPR0045: Shell Scripting
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0045/hpr0045.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:41:18
---
Song by
Hello and welcome to episode 45 of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm your host, Doss Man, and today we're going to talk about shell scripting.
So what exactly is shell scripting versus other programming languages?
Basically, shell scripting is just a quick and easy way of stringing together several
different commands that already do the work you need to do, but you just need to automate
that.
And there's a lot of different ways to use shell scripts and whatnot.
There's a lot of different shells.
Now what other kind of examples might there be or what would make us different from
other programming?
Something like say, Perl would be probably a little bit better solution for a lot of things,
but for whatever reason, if you already know shell scripting, there's nothing wrong with
using that as opposed to Perl.
Perl is a little bit more programming, shell scripting or shells, corn shell, born-again
shell, bash shell, sea shell, all those.
There were their own unique syntax, basic looping capability, variables, and whatnot.
So they provide some basic programming functionality for the typical Unix Administrator or anyone
else, per se.
So I guess we'll jump into what really is the written butter of shell scripting.
But a lot of that is basically mostly using other commands.
You're just manipulating other commands to do your bidding in an automated fashion.
Other commands, mostly like the Unix Utilities, like Cat, Soar, Grip, Head and Tail.
You're basically saying you need to analyze some log files automatically and send yourself
a notification.
Well, you know, you just use Grip to extract out, you know, look for certain strings,
like saying you're a sys log.
And then if there is a match found, you can use, you know, like mail X or mail or some
dogmaically send yourself an email to your cellphone or whatever when there's a problem found.
So of course, really what you're learning is the syntax of all these external commands
that you're using for the shell script and then just, you know, learning how to string
them together through the use of the shell.
There's also a bit more complicated shell or not shell, but Unix Command, like said
in Ock.
I wouldn't exactly call this complicated, but there's a lot of functionality in those
two commands right there that you can do.
And it's kind of funny to see over and over new programming languages, we implement with
these two commands had, you know, years ago.
So you know, there's a lot that you can do.
You can pretty much do anything that you would normally do in Perl and a shell script.
But the, it may not be quite as efficient because the way you have to interact with the
commands, you know, but said in Ock, give you a lot of ability there, like, uh, Ock typically
I'll use that for extracting columns, like say you have some output and you need to separate
based on, you know, a common delimiter, you can use an Ock with a dash f flag and then
a comma and it'll separate.
And then, uh, then I, you know, do a print and a dollar sign, uh, three to get the third
column separated by semicolon or colon, comma, I said.
And, uh, so, you know, you can cut up your data in certain ways.
Ock, you could actually do in your entire script probably and said just said or just Ock.
They're a very full featured, uh, programs, but I only use a very tiny subset of their
features typically said is really good for, uh, of course, said is the stream editor basically
it's just a line at a time editor and you perform functions based on a line, uh, a, you
know, based on a single, you know, field per se.
And so you could, uh, a lot of times I'll do like a, uh, substitution and that's real
handy way of basically match the string and then change it to this other string or also
another way you could use that, uh, I use that a lot to just blank out a certain portion
of the string that I don't want.
Um, so if this, if this, you know, find the string and just remove it from my, my input
line, uh, Ock, again, looks at the whole document and sort of works on columns, although
that it's not the only thing it does.
But, uh, now there, there's a lot there, um, now also a lot of what people probably use
and what I use are third party tools, uh, that are not, I wouldn't say classic Unix tools
but these days pretty much are like, say, W get, um, I'll use that a lot to retrieve things
for myself and, uh, do that in an automated fashion like all, uh, one script that I use
that's, uh, fairly, got to be fairly large for a radio station and I, it automatically
checks the latest gas prices from gasbuddy.com and, uh, what it does, it loads the front page
with W get, I pull it down and then I use said and Ock and other various utilities to carve
out the, uh, names, the URLs for the image files that I have currently contained in the
current gas prices and then I'll, uh, parse through and use W get again to download those
image files, um, individually from the site and then I'll pipe them through, uh, image
magic and then, uh, go CR, uh, uh, good new, uh, OCR program and extract the, uh, text
data per se that that image contains, um, and then, uh, at last lay, I feed that into
festival, um, and without, before going into festival, I actually will feed it through
ECA Sam, which is a command line, sound board, uh, sound program that you can, uh, change
the bit rate, change, uh, you know, quality or whatnot or me. And the reason I do that
is I make it match, uh, the same characteristics as a piece of background music and then merge
them together and of course you have to cut the background music off at a certain length
so you don't have, you know, like your, your 45 second gas report and then another minute
of music running in the background. So, so you can do quite a bit, uh, with shell scripts,
whatnot and, you know, someone, it might be better to, to do this in parole, it might be
more efficient possibly but, uh, it, at the moment I've gotten to be, uh, probably too good.
I don't want to say that I'm too good at shell scripting but I've gotten good enough,
I can do everything I want to do with it. I'm really not a programmer but I do enjoy being
able to automate things and whatnot. So, uh, there's, uh, you know, I've gotten good enough that
I can do anything that I want to do with, with, with, uh, shell scripting, uh, compared to any other
type of, uh, typical scripting language like parole or, uh, Python or something, you know. So,
until I find he had an even bigger project that I want to do, uh, uh, you know, I, not to say
I don't know anything about parole but, uh, I, I, I have to, I enjoy just being able to sit down
and get results right away and basically I'm impatient and since I, uh, I know enough parole to,
uh, fix other people's scripts and stuff, uh, make them do my bidding, uh, but I, uh, if I'm writing
something from scratch, I usually start with shell script. Um, so anyway, um, yeah, I mean,
and the other thing is, you know, I really don't like re-inventing the wheel. Uh, if there's a,
a binary program that does what I want to do and I just need to automate it, fine. Um, I, I just
use a shell script to, uh, you know, someone else has already done the hard work of writing the
program that does something like, you know, like the Aircrack suite and then all I want to do is just
automate it, you know, so, um, all right, uh, I guess an actual kind of move into some places
shell scripts are commonly used, um, and that you might encounter them, uh, you know, like,
configure scripts. If you, uh, build a compile open source software, uh, that's all, uh, you know,
shell scripting and, uh, you know, custom tools. If, if, you know, if you're a unique sad man,
you're always doing something. It may not be, a lot of people probably are a bit more advanced
in using parole or something, but, you know, shell script, uh, quick and dirty is a,
easy way to solve a lot of problems, you know, um, there's also, uh, probably places that a
shell script shouldn't shouldn't even be used. Uh, one place, be like Apache CGI's, um, you know,
that's, uh, pretty dangerous to use a shell script in a CGI, uh, because if something breaks in
your script, you're actually left with a real shell there, and that's one reason probably why
parole is traditionally used in that environment, although PHP is taken over that role now, but,
um, you know, a parole script, uh, if it breaks and it dumps out, it's just a parole interpreter.
There's no shell there. So you can do CGI's in shell, and I'll, I'll
will admit that I've done that from time to time, uh, the quick and dirty way to get something done,
but I would not leave that in a production environment or something. That's not a good,
good place for, for a shell script for that reason. So, um, yeah, uh, I guess that's, uh,
about all I had to talk about today. Um, hope, uh, this was informative for, for someone that's
not familiar, per se, with shell scripting, uh, hope you have a good day. Enjoy it. And talk to you later.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-E-T for all of us in the

553
hpr_transcripts/hpr0046.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,553 @@
Episode: 46
Title: HPR0046: Yahoo Pipes
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0046/hpr0046.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:44:07
---
Music
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
Hey everybody, this is Peter from the Fresh Ubuntu podcast and I just wanted to record
this little intro.
For this episode, I reunited with my old podcasting co-host partner in crime, Scott Willsey.
We had a lot of fun, although the episode was pretty much off the cuff.
We spent a lot of time fiddling around with Yahoo Pipes and we learned a couple of things
as we did it.
So apologies in advance for the casual nature of the show.
I think the audio quality is just fine and there are some really good tidbits, especially
towards the end of the podcast where I compete with Flash Gordon and save the universe.
So if you want to see how that happened or listen to how that happened, just keep listening.
Also note that we're putting some links in the show notes and Scott did a companion
screencast for this.
So you can actually follow along.
We've got the links up to YouTube where we put the files and we hope you enjoy.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
And welcome to Hacker Public Radio for Tuesday, March 4th, 2008.
This is Peter from the Fresh Ubuntu podcast and I am joined with my former co-host from
the Mac new podcast, Scott Willsey.
How you doing, Scott?
Hi.
You're a hard man to get a hold of peace.
Yeah, yeah, you say that every time, but I don't believe you.
Peter, it's the hardest man to get a hold of in the world, only after you, only after
you.
There's people that...
But anyway, friends that live in other countries that I know that I can get a hold of
easier.
Well, the other countries have better internet connectivity than Vermont.
That's why people, before we digress way too far, you know, we want to talk today about,
what are we talking about, Scott?
You told me to look at Yahoo Pipes, so I'm hoping that sounds great.
So overview, what is Yahoo Pipes exactly?
How would you describe it?
I mean, the website describes it as a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate,
and mash up content from around the web, but that sounds like marketing speak to me.
What do you think it is?
I call it RSS routing.
I like that.
I like that.
I was thinking RSS feed manipulation, but routing sounds good.
It actually needs a lot more than routing.
Well, I call it that because basically you can take all kinds of different RSS feeds
and route them into different inputs and merge them together and filter them.
So it really is more manipulation.
You're actually more correct when you say that, but RSS routing just kind of rolls off
the tongue.
But yeah, there's a whole lot of capability in here that is manipulation and processing
and filtering, and so yeah, I'd say that your definition is probably better.
Anyway, let's start talking about Pipes a little bit and give an example of how one might
use it, shall we?
Okay.
Okay, first thing you need to do is you need to have a Pipes account.
And if you have a Yahoo account already, they're pretty much the same thing.
So once you've got that set up, what I would do is head on over to pipes.yahoo.com.
And once you're on there, you get greeted by the homepage.
And one of the options is to create a pipe.
So I'm going to go ahead over there and click on create a pipe.
And it's going to ask me for my login again, which only takes a second, boom.
And I'm logged in.
So now I'm at the Pipes editing screen.
And this is kind of cool.
It's all Ajax graphical drag and drop kind of stuff, which is pretty impressive.
If you look on the left side, the first thing that you see are your sources.
And you can fetch all sorts of things, CSV files, RSS feeds, web pages, flicker images,
Google based data, Yahoo searches, all kinds of stuff.
For purposes of my demo, I'm just going to grab an RSS feed.
So I'm going to take up the little button that says fetch feed.
I'm going to drag it and drop it into the workspace on the right side.
Okay.
Now Peter, just one interjection.
I'm doing a screencast of this as you're talking.
So I'm going to be doing your example that you're giving right now.
Oh, excellent.
So I'll stop typing then and I'll just dictate and watch you follow my direction.
Okay.
Or you can do it.
Go ahead and do it so you can see what's going on.
So I know what the hell I'm talking about.
Exactly.
Excellent.
Okay.
So when I drag and drop the fetch feed example onto the workspace on the right, it asked
me for a URL.
And I can just go ahead and paste in a URL.
So now in another window, I'm going to just grab an RSS feed that I already know, but
I'll just dictate it.
I'm going to grab a short one.
How about Molly Woods blog?
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go grab her RSS feed.
And again, I could copy and paste this or I can just type it in.
Her RSS feed for her blog is HTTP colon slash slash the Molly THMOLY.com slash blog slash
question mark feed equals RSS to.
So I'm just going to type that into a little fetch feed URL.
Now at the bottom of the fetch feed little object that we dragged in, there's a little
ball.
And what you can do is you can drag that at ball, click on it and drag it to the pipe output
object at the bottom of the window.
And you see there's a little ball at the top of the pipe output object.
So if you drag those two and connect them, what you do is you make a little pipe, get
it?
And you basically are telling it to pipe the data from that fetch feed, that feed URL
into the output.
So this is a rather boring example because all I have done right now is taken Molly Woods
RSS feed and made quite another RSS feed.
I'm just duplicating it, reading from one to another.
Peter, you've created a perfectly, perfectly working RSS feed.
Congratulations.
The only thing is whereas her feed was like 20 or 25 characters to start, the Yahoo pipes
output is going to be like 500 characters long and stuff.
So all I've done is added more overhead, so that's kind of dumb.
All right, so here's another thing we could do though.
Let's say we're big fans of Molly Wood and we want to take all instances of Molly Wood
that we can have and just have a single feed.
Well, if you look back up in that fetch feed window, there's a little plus sign.
And it says plus URL.
So I happen to know that, let's see, well buzz out loud, there's a, you know, an RSS feed
for buzz out loud.
Now that's a really long one, so I'm not going to read it to you.
But I'm going to go into my RSS reader or go to the buzz out loud website or whatnot.
And I'm going to get a hold of that URL.
And I'm going to just paste that into the, I'm going to go paste that into the fetch
feed window.
Okay.
Okay.
It's going to paste that in there.
And that's for a podcast.
And that's for a podcast.
That's for a podcast.
That's right.
There you go.
So I think I got it here.
Paces that over to you so you can paste that in there.
Okay, so this is interesting.
You've got this really huge long link.
And when I look at the buzz out loud page to subscribe to this podcast, it's a really short
link.
It's cnet.com slash i slash pod slash cnet underscore buzz dot XML.
Oh, well, you've got a better one then.
Let's use yours.
Okay.
So we're going to punch that in.
Now what we've done is we have made basically this is like a, the, the Molly wood feed is what
we're making here.
Now, if we wanted to subscribe to some other stuff, we can just keep on adding URLs.
All that's going to do is basically tells Yahoo Pipes to mash all of these different feeds
into one big feed.
So the advantage is then in our RSS reader or program or whatever it is that we use to
access these, we can just grab all of these things and have them piped into one single feed.
So that's the, like one of the simplest things that you could use Yahoo Pipes for.
So again, when we're done, all we need to do is drag the ball from the bottom of the fetch
feed object to the top, sorry, to the ball on the top of the pipe output object.
And when we're finished, we click on the save button in the upper right corner of the screen.
And it asks for a pipe name.
So I'm going to call this Molly wood feeds.
All right, which is not the same as Molly woods feed.
That's different.
I'm going to save that.
It says saving.
And when it's finished, we can go back to my pipes boom, boom, boom.
And oh, I'm sorry, we should go to run pipe.
When we're finished, we can go to run pipe.
And what happens is it runs the pipe.
And it gives you the pipes web address.
So in this case, it's, you know, it's a long convoluted thing.
It's, you know, pipes dot Yahoo dot com slash pipe slash pipe dot info slash blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
mangled stuff.
So what you could do is you copy and paste this URL into your own RSS reader.
And now you've got Molly woods blog plus buzz out loud in one single feed.
And you could do this with all of Molly woods stuff if you wanted to.
So that's a simple example of how to aggregate two RSS feeds into one.
Okay, now here's something that I found.
That's actually pretty good.
Now I tried to what I was doing this.
I was trying to take your blog and the fresh Ubuntu podcasts blog.
And I was trying to do something very similar.
But in the output, it was only showing me one at a time when I was testing it here in the editor.
Okay.
And so as I was doing some searching, I think, yeah, I don't remember which one of these fetch feed ones I was using.
Site feed.
But anyway, it told me that I wanted to use a, is it an operator?
It told me that I wanted to use a loop to grab stuff from multiple.
And then I got really confused.
So some of the examples on this site were a little confusing to me the way they were doing things.
And specifically grabbing multiple RSS feeds was one of them.
This works perfectly.
I'm not sure why they led me through the thing that I went through.
Yeah, I don't know about a loop.
Another way to do it, if you have problems with it, one thing you can do is use the union operator.
If on the left side, again, under operators.
If you expand that out towards the bottom, there's one called union.
And that's actually another way that may work better.
I'm not exactly sure what the difference would be to just putting one on the other.
But that may do a better job of merging them.
Okay, so yeah, go ahead.
I was just going to say one thing about all these little modules is when you drag them over here.
And here's how I kind of got led down the wrong trail initially.
There's a question mark there.
And if you click on the question mark down in the lower left hand side of your browser window underneath,
the sources pane, you're going to see another little pane that explains the module that you clicked to the help for.
So here it's telling me union merges up to five sources together.
And then they have examples using and learn more about this module.
Now I think it was the fetch feed that I got confused on because I just clicked on the fetch feed help.
And if you click on learn more about this module, it takes you to a page where it says feed auto discovery.
Let's use one or more website URLs in the module.
It examines those pages for information.
Oh, that's what it was.
It was the feed auto discovery module I was having problems with.
And then it says if more than one feed is found, the multiple items are returned because more than one feed can be returned.
The output from this module is often fed into a loop module with a fetch feed sub module.
That's where I started getting confused.
And I did the wrong thing because in your case, all I needed to do is use the fetch feed, put in both URLs.
And I would have gotten what I wanted without having to the loop.
But I was trying to do the auto discovery thing.
Okay.
So it can't be a little bit complex.
It can. It can definitely get a little complex.
But what's also interesting is that you can use these.
Now I haven't done this for a while.
I've got to dig into my pipes.
Excuse me.
But I had a pipe that I created some time last summer.
And what I did is I made an aggregator for, I think it was digs technology feed and also tech meme.
And I think something like a tech crunch or something.
And basically what I did is I filtered them out so that if the source for, or like feed one,
actually came from feed two that it would not publish it.
So the idea was that if, for instance, a tech meme article got dug.
Or for instance, let's say a, a scobilizer article showed up on tech meme.
And I already subscribed to scobilizer that I would not see the tech meme article.
And so basically, you know, the idea is it keep out duplicates because there's nothing more annoying than, you know, scrolling through, you know,
a couple hundred RS tests entries and having to like, you know, skip pass the same article again and again and again.
Or reading the same article again and again and again.
Yeah, and here's one thing that I noticed looking at ours example, which works really well.
But if you go run the thing, I'm sure you want to navigate away from this pages because I made some changes that I didn't save.
But if you run this, for me, it comes up with all the buzz out loud stuff on top.
And you have to scroll 30 feet to finally get to some mollywood blog stuff.
I think that that's, that would start out that way.
But over time, you know, as, because we added one first.
But I think over time, it's going to take them in the order that they appear.
Right. So she does a blog post that'll show up.
Then if she does a podcast that'll show up.
And then if she does three blog posts, those will show up. Yeah.
So yeah, it just went out and grabbed each feed right now saying, I don't know, I have nothing.
So it went out and grabbed everything you could find off those feeds for the moment.
So yeah, that's what I did a whole whole feed at a time.
Right.
So let me give a quick example then on how I did that that merger so that I wouldn't be, you know,
seeing too many duplicates.
The first thing I did is I went out and I grabbed the RSS feed for dig technology,
their technology subset.
And if you go to dig.com, you can probably find that pretty easily.
So go to dig, I click on technology.
And then in the, in my Firefox browser bar, I see the RSS link right there.
dig.com slash RSS slash container technology.xml.
Perfect.
And I'll go back here and I'm creating this as we go.
So I'm going to paste that into a fetch feed control or module.
Okay.
Exactly. There we go.
Yep.
So then where do we want to go next?
How about, well, let's go to, you know, tech meme.
So T-E-C-H-M-E-M-E.com.
And again, right at the top, there's an RSS link right there.
Is there?
Yep.
Oh, sorry, it's in the, in the browser bar for me for my Firefox.
Oh, yeah, I see it.
Okay.
Yep.
So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back up to the operators.
And I'm going to grab a filter.
And I'm going to drag that under my dig feed.
And then what I'm going to do is add a new rule.
So under the filter action, I'm going to choose block.
And I'm going to block any, sorry, items that match any of the following.
And I'm going to click the plus sign under rules to add a new rule.
And the rule I'm going to add is that if item.link,
which would be the items URL, contains.
And I'm going to punch in HTTP colon slash slash www.techmeam.com.
Because techmeam.com is my other feed.
So right now, I've got my fetch feed object.
And then under that, I have a filter under dig, which says basically,
don't allow any techmeam articles.
Okay.
I think I'm wearing this wrong.
I need to wire that from the one URL just from the dig URL to this filter.
Right.
Ah, okay.
Got you.
Otherwise, that would be doing something really wrong.
How do you do that?
Basically, I have the, the starting on the left side, I have two columns.
I have a fetch feed on the upper left, and then a fetch feed on the upper right.
And I have a filter under each one.
Okay, okay.
I'm sorry.
I have one fetch feed grabbing both those URLs.
Let me.
Ah, no, no.
We need two feeds.
Okay.
Because we're going to run them into two separate filters.
I got you.
Okay.
So let me do Command-A, Command-X.
We really sound like we spend a lot of time propping for this, don't we?
Yeah.
Well, that's okay.
Okay, okay.
So now you're going to have two separate filter.
One filter for each of those.
I got you.
Exactly.
The new filter under TechMeme, what we're going to do is make another block rule.
And we're basically going to block anything that comes from dig.com.
So under the item link there, we're just going to block dig.com.
And I can probably just type dig.com.
I don't need all the other stuff.
Exactly.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
So I've got the fetch feed for TechMeme wired to the filter that blocks anything from dig.com in item.link.
And I've got the fetch feed for dig.com container technology to a filter that says block.
Any items that match any of the following item.link contains TechMeme.com.
Okay.
Perfect.
Okay, good.
All right.
So, you know, you could do a bunch of things with this.
Like, you know, you could say if you read Scobilizer, and you know, Robert Scobil's posts have a tendency to show up on TechMeme,
you could also just add a new rule and say if the item.link contains Scobilizer, then block that as well.
Okay. Now, I think in order to get these to the output, I need that union control.
That is correct.
So underneath both of those two filters, you're going to need a union operator.
And what you're going to do is drag the pipe, you know, from the filter on the left and the drag pipe from the filter on the right down into the union.
Right.
And then you're going to drag the output of the union to your pipe output.
Okay, cool.
Now, another thing you can do is a sort operator.
And this actually probably would have cleaned up the mollywood problem when it did all of the buzz out louds and then all of the mollywood stuff.
We can drag a sort operator.
So if you go back over to operators on the left column, sorry, and drag a sort in between the union and the pipe output.
If you choose to sort by item.pubdate, the publication date.
And then you can choose to sort them in ascending or descending order, if whether you choose to see newest first or oldest first.
And then drag that to the pipe output.
Now, one thing I want to mention, when Peter's talking about, you know, item.pubdate, item.link, all these things that are showing up in these modules, you wire.
You know, whatever you wire the two modules together first and it'll update with.
So when I took the union and I wired it to the sort, then I could see the different fields that I could use as my criteria.
It updated it with whatever's coming in.
Here's all the things that are coming in, which one do you want to use as your operator?
Exactly.
So it's showing you all of the XML elements of those RSS feeds.
Right.
Because as we know, RSS is just, you know, it's just an XML with a specific format to it.
Yes.
So that's how you could make yourself a Yahoo pipes field or a feed, sorry, a pipe, and you know, reduce some of the clutter.
So once you know that this is working to your satisfaction, what you could then do is, you know, you could go ahead and you can basically unsubscribe from dig.com
technology feed and unsubscribe from tech memes feed.
And instead subscribe to this podcast, sorry, this podcast, instead subscribe to this pipe.
And that will you get them both without the duplicates.
You have another example you want to run over or want to try to figure something out?
No, I don't think so.
Basically all I did was I came in here, I started messing with it, and I took your feed and the Fresh Ubuntu podcast.
And the RSS auto discovery thing, it was the loops where I really started getting messed up on.
There were a couple of examples where they did some looping through RSS auto discovery or they were looping through something.
That was one thing I couldn't find specific examples for the case that I was trying to do, but I was trying to do the auto discovery.
And then the auto discovery is nice because if you ever use Google Reader, it works that way.
You just put in a URL and it figures out what RSS feeds are available and then it comes up with one, which is really nice.
So I would imagine if I could figure out the auto discovery thing and maybe put it through the loop and figure out how to get the feed that I want.
If there's multiple feeds, that would be a really cool feature that way you don't have to go out.
You can just plug in a website, you don't have to necessarily go out.
Now, the nice thing where that would come in handy is you have user inputs and I'm guessing that you could use the user inputs to prompt people.
So somebody could come here and I could prompt them to, yeah, you could say you are ill input.
And they could put in a URL, maybe they don't know the exact feed on dig.com that they want or whatever, but they could plug in dig.com and it would go out and it would find those using the feed auto discovery.
And then maybe there would be some way to let them choose something or something.
I don't know.
Or something.
Well, one of the reasons that we don't have everything totally memorized here and stuff is because there are just so many options.
I mean, you can go, like I said, through all sorts of different sources, there are different user inputs like you said.
So you can ask a person to put something in and then you could use those in your operators.
You've got counts, filters, loops, you've got regular expression support, you can sort things, you can split feeds.
A lot of your standard text manipulation program operators that you would normally find in a scripting language like Pearl or Python or something like that, you can do here.
And that's pretty slick.
I think it's got a lot of power based on a very, you know, it's actually fairly intuitive once you start playing with it.
The best thing to do is start just fiddling around with, make some pipes and throw them into your RSS reader, whether it's Google Reader or whatnot, and just see what the output is.
And then if you don't get what you expect, go back and tweak it a little bit and see what happens.
And yeah, and I was going to say that's actually one of the more powerful things about this is you're sitting here looking at this interface, you're making these things.
But what you may not realize for the casual observers, that's exactly what this is.
You're creating a new RSS feed that you can then use in whatever reader you happen to use. For me, it's Google Reader.
But, you know, whatever. And it is very powerful. I like pretty much everything about this.
I even like the name pipes, which is kind of a Unix thing where you're piping one thing to another, taking the output of one thing and using it as the input something else.
And that's exactly what they're doing here. So I don't know, I'm impressed.
You know, Yahoo really hasn't come up with anything cool in a while.
And of course, there's the whole Microsoft maybe buying Yahoo thing and all this nonsense that's been going on with Yahoo.
But when I saw this, I thought, now this is slicker than anything I've seen from Google in a while personally.
Yeah, it's very well run and it feels polished. You know, it feels finished.
This doesn't feel like even though it says Yahoo pipes beta, you know, it doesn't feel like a beta application in any way.
It feels pretty good. And I've been running it like I said since I think July or so.
And as far as I know, I've never really had a problem.
Yeah, I haven't been messing with this as long as you have, but certainly when I was playing around with it, I didn't come across any bugs.
Anything I tried to do worked in the manner that it was intended to as far as I could tell.
If there were any problems, it was me trying to understand how does this work and what I do with this knot.
Operator error. Yeah, it was operator or wealth.
Maybe not just error, but maybe just not yet rocking exactly how some of these things work.
Like I said, the loop thing, I would need to work with a little bit to figure out exactly how that could be used in such a way that actually.
Another thing you could do, for example, is you could use this as a social networking status aggregator.
For example, I've blogged in the past and gone over on the podcast how I have all of my, you know, Facebook, JaiKu, Twitter, you know, all this kind of stuff merging into one place.
Well, if you wanted to simplify things, you could, for instance, have all of your Facebook friends, status updates, all of your Twitter updates, your JaiKu updates, etc.
You could subscribe to all of those right here and then make a single pipe.
And then that way, whenever you go to like move to a new RSS reader or something, you can just have one URL that you use.
And, you know, you could further shorten it by making a tiny URL or use some other URL redirecter to point to your pipe.
So that way you could make yourself a memorable, short, easy to use URL for, you know, like something that collects all of your stuff.
Now, obviously you could just subscribe to multiple feeds within your RSS reader, you know, which would accomplish pretty much the same thing.
But this gives you the ability to filter them and things like that.
So you could say, you know, don't publish the same thing twice if, you know, or whatnot, you can filter them out like we did in the last example.
Peter, forget Flash Gordon, you just saved the universe.
I mean, you know, one of the banes of Web 2.0 existence, first of all, I could rant for weeks about Web 2.0 and the whole social networking event.
But that's a separate podcast.
Okay, we'll do that separately sometime.
But, yeah, one of the banes of that existence is, you know, a lot of people like myself have tried Twitter, we've tried some of the others I can't even think of right now.
But, you know, I've got accounts on several of these things and the only one I use right now is Twitter.
There was just too much.
And, you know, this is one of the things where, you know, Apple does well that sometimes other people don't.
They understand that simple sometimes really is better.
And that's why I use Twitter.
Simple is better.
Yeah, Twitter has its problems.
And, you know, I've made jokes about Twitter being an example of how Rails can't scale and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
But, some Rails people right now are pulling their hair out and exposing their buttocks to me.
But, you know, hey, so, but the fact of the matter is it's very simple.
You don't have to learn a lot of features. You just use it and you're done.
And, I don't use any of those others because of that.
But, yeah, this would be one way where you could make use of some of those others.
And then easily only have one thing to search.
Now, of course, when it comes time to update things, you'd have to go to individual places or use an application that can connect to them.
But, as far as just following stuff, this would be perfect for that kind of thing.
Yeah, it's an app, you know, you could consider this an alternative to the flock browser.
If you're a little bit of a do-it-yourselfer.
See, I like to consider myself.
I'm somewhat of a do-it-yourselfer.
But, you know, I don't know.
Given the amount of time I have available, it's probably too much work for me to sit down and write a purl script to parse all of these RSS feeds.
I know I can do it.
I've done it in the past.
But, it's a hell of a lot easier for me to just, you know, fire up Yahoo Pipes, drag and drop a few objects around.
Boom. Done.
Works.
Unless I face it, it's a lot more fun.
It is.
It is.
I mean, you know, if you really, if you're a decent programmer, you could do a, you know, some kind of widget interface and write your own.
But, why?
They've done it for you.
Well, see, here's the thing.
When you're at a party and you're the geek, and there's some semi-geeks roaming around, or people who really don't rock it, but they think they like geeks.
And you whip out your laptop and you're doing this.
Anybody can sit there and type a bunch of lines of code.
And their eyes are going to glaze over and they're going to go stuff their head in the Heineken barrel.
But, if you start doing this,
Hey, this thing might actually get.
That's right.
They're going to say, ooh, shiny objects, they are kind of shiny.
Have you noticed that?
A little bit of a glossy finish.
I think they're pretty cool.
Well, that's about all I have on Yahoo Pipes.
Unless you think you have anything else.
I think we can wrap this up and call it a show.
I think we can wrap it up and call it a show.
And Peter, I don't know what method of making links available are for this podcast.
We can do a post them in.
It's going to show up like a standard blog post.
We can put all sorts of links right into the show and you're going to do a screencast on this
and we can put this up on YouTube too, right?
Yeah, we can put it up on YouTube and I'll probably also post it in my blog.
Awesome.
And then you can post it in your own blog as well.
We can post it all over the place and then we can make a pipe to aggregate it.
We can basically make a pipe to have all the feeds for this episode if we wanted to.
It's going to be recursive.
It's going to be the greatest example of recursiveness that Peter and I can come up with,
which is not very great, but hey.
Well, you know, we're good minds.
I don't know if we're great minds.
It's the virtual equivalent of for a good time call.
Awesome.
Great.
Well, until the next episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Peter DeColitis from the Fresh Ubuntu podcast.
You can track me at freshubuntu.com or on my own blog at pn72.com.
Scott, where can people follow you?
I'm Scott from nowhere.
Nothing, but I do have a blog.
I blog Scott.wordpress.com.
You can go check out and it's mainly Mac related, but check it out.
Yeah, but every now and then you, you know, you rage against the machine and, you know, whatever.
And so they're pretty funny.
And then it refreshes me and then I have to stop raging for a while.
Well, you stop raging and then monolith 2000 rears it's ugly had again, but, you know,
that's just the way of things.
It's the way of life.
Alright, thanks for listening, everybody.
And if you've made it this far, you might want to count your eyes out.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HBR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O-D-E-T for all of her dreams.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.

382
hpr_transcripts/hpr0047.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,382 @@
Episode: 47
Title: HPR0047: Sys Internals Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0047/hpr0047.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:44:28
---
music
Welcome to this episode of Hacker Public Radio, this is Zoke again, doing part 2 in the
System Tunnel Suite.
So hopefully you've downloaded the programs.
I've got my wife's computer up and running and I'm going to be running through some of
the programs on there and explaining what some of the options are and what the output
is.
The files downloaded are zip files.
You can extract them out wherever you want, they're just plain executable to be installed
or anything fancy.
When you extract them, for example, here I've got the Auto Runs program, we have four
files, Auto Runs.chm, which is the Help File, Auto Runs XC, which is the GUI version,
the Windows version, Auto Runs SC.exe, which is the DOS-based version and the Euler.txt,
which is that wonderful end-to-user license agreement, basically saying if you die it's not
Microsoft fault.
So if we go and fire up Auto Runs, it takes a little while to load here.
And we have a window with lots of options here, everything log on Explorer, Internet Explorer,
Schedule Tasks, Services, Drivers, Boot Execute, etc, etc.
Everything, obviously, has everything and if you want only part of it, it's like the
Internet Explorer.
Once you just click on the Internet Explorer tab and it comes up with various things
like the Browser Help Objects.
The Browser Help Objects are basically the toolbars and I can see here that we have
Adobe PDF read-link helper twice actually, but we have that listed down and it tells you
that wherever file is, it's C-Pregumphiles Adobe Acrobat 7.0, ActiveX, A-C-R-O-I-E,
Helper, D-L-L. There's a checkbox you can simply uncheck that and that will stop the
program from running.
It doesn't actually delete it from the registry or keep it there.
What you can actually do is click on the link you want to remove and click Delete or click
the little X at the top or Control-D, it says Frish or Cut.
I'm going to go and delete one of these PDF ones, probably better leave the other one
the WIFE way upset, but personally, I can't stand Adobe and the way it takes far too
much of your memory and process of power.
So we can look through here and see what we've got, we've got the ZoneLarm spy block
at BHO, leave that one in ZoneLarm, wouldn't be my choice of firewall, but works pretty
well for the less technical.
We can go through everything and list some of the options here.
We have far too much stuff, we've got quick time while that can go, hate quick time, that
takes up far too many things.
Which of other weird stuff, MochaSoft did installs all the manner of bizarre things.
If you're worried about some of these, you can then do a quick search on them through
Google or something and I actually find out whether there's spyware malware or just
not very good generally.
One example, if I can find it, was the iTunes stuff, it has an odd name, I can't find it,
I don't know, the name is French and it's just confusing.
Most of the other stuff actually does say Apple, I should say Apple software update job,
that makes sense.
It has Apple in the name, whereas the one that actually runs, okay, finally found that.
Yes, it's the Bonjour service, Bonjour, the French for literal translation, good day.
It's kind of a silly name and if you saw that just running, you'd think what the hell's
Bonjour, you know, it sounds a bit odd.
Some of these spyware things, they're trying to call themselves things that might sound
reasonable but just seem a little odd and that's one of the ones there.
Now I know the wife's computer's fairly well kept up to date because I run stuff on
it, saves me having to faff around fixing it when she does something she shouldn't
do, like that time she got the Sony DRM crap from a CD and we still can't get the CD
ROM driver to work properly, at least burning CDs.
Anyway, so you can go through all the different options here, network providers and you can
see you've got the LAN Man workstation and it's fairly self-explanatory for most of those.
And again you can just go through, you can even uncheck them which keeps them in the registry
or the files around but means they won't run or you can delete them which means it removes
them entirely.
So there's a few of them I've got here that what I generally do is if I don't like the
look of it I will just uncheck them and reboot the computer and see what's going on and
then I can just check them back if I deleted something I shouldn't have done, like that
one time I broke the computer and stopped Windows from accessing the internet but that's
another story.
That's about it for auto runs.
Next up we've got BG info, now again this is a fairly simple program it just great text
on the background.
When you run the program it gives you a list of options that you can, what text you put
on there, boot time, CPU, default gateway, DHCP server, DNS server, free space, hostname,
internet explorer, version IP address, logon, domain logon server, MAC address, machine
domain memory, network card, network speed, network type, OS version, service pack, snapshot
time, subnet mask, system type, username and volumes.
You can get these displayed around on the screen you can choose whether you want to copy
the user's wallpaper settings and then add it in or just stick in the corner, make the
wallpaper visible behind the text, put it on top left top right, well any of the nine
corners sides or middle of the screen you can choose whether it goes on on the desktop
sort or for console use or terminal server users and you can actually run a preview.
As I said fairly useful if you actually run test environments and things there is a
nice little preview screen option here which tells me all these exciting things default
gateway, 192.168.10.1, the same DHCP server, same DNS server, free space, 31.38 gig,
NTFS on C, the hostname which I won't mention, internet explorer version, all these stuff
that can be interesting and useful to you if you're testing.
Well I think that's enough about that, I'm going to remove all this before the wife
complains what's this weird stuff on my computer.
Next was blue screen, I'm not actually going to talk about that because if you don't know
how to run a screen save up then what on earth are you doing listening to something like
this, contig makes things contiguous, contig exy, system terminal software, license terms,
blah blah blah yes, I guess we have to agree to that.
It's really exciting, standard Windows stuff.
If you run contig, it's dust-based program, relies on entities built in DFrame support
to make specified file contiguous on the disk, use the top noise execution of a few
currently used files, basically you just run it, you've got a couple of options, V for
the Bose, A for analysed fragmentation, Q for quiet, so if you do contig dash, A it comes
down and tells you which file you want to check, so contig dash, A, C come on back, slash
start at star, I'm not going to do the entire directory and it comes down and tells you
what's going on, this file is defagmented, it will look this file is being used by something
else, I've got a lot of windows for that, 51 files, one fragment, one frag per file, so
all defagmented, mainly because I ran it last week, defragged everything, but you can run
that against specific files if you're having issues with some being rather big and bloated.
Next one is file one, if you run the file one exy, again have to agree to software license
terms on the new versions, didn't have to on the old versions, straight away we have
a huge amount of stuff, VS Mon is doing something accessing, C windows, internet logs it looks
like, right click on that, exclude process, don't want to hear about that, SV host is doing
well everything, it seems to be accessing documents and settings, windows, the root directory
everything, select exclude that process, CSRSS has got a bunch of many S's for my liking,
it's accessing lots of things, windows, manifests or something, right click exclude process, AVG,
CC, XC, well antivirus is running everything, right click exclude process, AVG server, exclude
process, ZL client, that's a firewall, exclude process, explore exes doing stuff, exclude
process, win logons doing stuff, exclude process, okay I think that's about everything, now
if we go and run something, let's find something interesting shall we, internet explorer that
will be a laugh, run internet explorer and we can see exactly what it does, internet explorer
is loaded up, let's go to Microsoft, Microsoft wait for it to load up, Microsoft.com, no connection
to the internet is currently available, well I'm on the internet, try again, now it works
and it's loading, something, it's still loading and we're done, I'm actually on DSL if
you can believe that, I blame the wife's computer, or just windows generally, so here we
go, let's close that down for now, let's see what it did, so we've got the logs here, huge
amounts of things, the scroll bar is, the scroll bar is incredibly small, it's about
three pixels wide, but I'll just read some of this stuff out, so in iExplore XC, it
able to read request, tells you the specific path, it was opening itself, it was a success,
offsets and length and stuff like that, file information, tells you what was going on,
anything interesting here, oh it's trying to open up, cconon backslash, dollar extend
backslash, and it was accessed in id, that's interesting, I wonder what's in the dollar extend
directory, and why exactly, we have a dollar extend directory, I don't like things with
dollars in front, dollars are, dollars normally the hidden files, hidden shares for example,
they just make me a little nervous, so I'll be looking through that and trying to work
out what's going on with that, what else has it been doing, it goes down to documents
and settings, all users application data, Google to find stuff, it goes to my DSC, whatever
that is, it goes down to my cookies, it goes to my temporary internet files, my history
goes for some reason, it goes to a different account for my boss mother, it actually opens
the my documents up, it goes in there, and here's another old one, making note of that,
have a look at that in a moment, try and work out what's going on there, all right, it's
loading up Adobe Acrobat, ask people, office stuff, yeah, it's opening up the C-Progress
Squiggle 1, that is like Mozilla, I know it's a tilde, I just call it a squiggle, it looks
like a squiggle, it's a squiggle, because if you turn around to people and say it's the
tilde, they say what the hell is the tilde, so it's a squiggle, you say the squiggle, top
left of the keyboard, and they say oh yeah, the squiggle, so if I call it a squiggle, that's
why, C-Progress, squiggle 1, Mozilla, squiggle 1, okay, for some reason it appears to be
opening Firefox app or something there, not quite sure why, but possibly Thunderbird,
actually, if that might make sense, it opens, I mean it's a ton of stuff, this is barely
50th of the way through, and it's opening up a ton of files and success, success, success,
sharing violation, I'll never see that in Windows 2, but it goes through all these, and you
can actually see exactly what files it's opening, so if you do get a program that errors,
if for example, you ran a program that errors and said file not found, very useful, didn't
tell you what file, you can run this, file monitor as I said, you'll have to filter out
all these things, you can say it was a standard filter set, and then you can run it and
you see exactly what file, exactly why, buffer overflow, well that's an explorer for
you, shocking, you know, a Microsoft product might actually have a buffer overflow, but
apparently MDM XC query information for I explore, and it has a buffer overflow, well I
never, you live and learn, car, Microsoft buffer overflows, yes, that sarcasm for anyone
that didn't quite get it, well here we go, couple of file not founds, don't really care,
it's, I really don't give a shit about it, but it's going to open various things here
and fading on some of these, cprogram files into the explorer, I explore xc.local, but
you can run these and see exactly what's going on, and why it's erroring, which is pretty
cool, and that's file one, okay, next up we have handle, run handle xc, it's a dust
one, all right, go into dust, go into the handle directory, and run handle xc, and watch
the screen flood by quickly, we have a ton of stuff here, but it will show exactly every
single file that we have open here, you'll actually want to grab or search through to find
the specific files that you find interesting here, but you know, it's opened up c.c.c.c.c.c.
things, my name, my actual name not zoke, but I'm not going to say it, local settings
history, history.a5 index, that, I'm different, read, write, so I mean you can see what's
it's got open, kind of similar to file one, but works just once, just for the moment,
I think that's about it for handle, list DLLs, which is another dust based one, tells
you exactly what versions of each DLL, so here we've got MSV CP60, so much of visual
CP for plus presumably, version 6.0 DLL, version 6.0 2.310 4.0 0 0 0 0 0, list of DLLs and
the version numbers, that can be pretty cool, if you're looking for a specific version
number, we wrote our own programs at work, and as I said, if you're looking for a crystal
report, screw up the wrong version number in the DLL, which I realized when listening
through, I actually called something else entirely, but the version number on the DLL, and
you can see what's right and what's wrong, so you can just look through that, that's pretty
cool, you can just get that run on a computer, and then you can analyze the file pretty easy
to write a simple program, just to load up a text file, output from here, and run it
through and see what versions of what DLLs are there, and what is missing to quickly
find what is the wrong one, alright, log on sessions, which is probably going to be a
DOS one again, I don't know what guess it is, and we have 5, 6 actually, because it starts
to 0, 6 log on sessions here, do we have, my wife is apparently logged on, a non-existent
blank user name is logged on, the NTO Authority Network Services Logon, NTO Authority Local
Service NTO Authority, anonymous login, and I'm logged on, exciting, totally when everyone
logged in, so the wife apparently got up at 6.52 and 16 seconds in the morning, and logged
on, which is when pretty much everything else started, or a few sex later, and I logged
on, 6 hours later, again this can be used for each one of the work out, exactly what's
running, if this machine was actually facing the internet, I'll be a little worried about
having these network services running, and I want to tie them down, well as much as
you can tie down a window session, anyway, alright, page de-frag, page de-frag comes
in lists, files, and the fragments, so, c, hyper fill, sys has 61,133 clusters and one
fragment, well exciting, pretty simple, you have an option for de-fraggin xboots or de-fraggin
every boot or don't de-frag, and that's basically the choices you have, you also have a choice
of saying how quickly before you abort, so you can have a 10 second time out, and you
can quickly click the button and it will cancel, running on your own computing, well as
we'll say de-frag every boot, if you're one of these people that you need, you turn the
computer and you go off and get a coffee, you can do that, that's nice and simple, and
if you don't you've got the 10 seconds or whatever to hit the button and cancel, if you
run the set it and you just decided to actually, you don't want to do it, you can just run
it again and un-set it, you just click the don't de-frag option at the bottom, that's pretty
simple, process explorer, so we have sysmodel process, interrupts, dpc, systems got about 18
versions of svc host, why I really don't know, it just always does, but the cool thing about
this, we can look under here, sysmodel process, system, sss, xe, windlogging, xe, service, xe,
so each one's calling the other one, then we have svc host, xe, and we hover over one of those,
we see the first one is the de-com service, process, launch, de-com launch, terminal services,
next one is remote procedure called rpc, next one is for, next one's for about 8 services
here actually, but we make updates and stuff, you can see exactly what everything is running,
and you can actually right click and say kill process, kill process, tree restart, suspend,
debug, separarities and so on, and it actually tells you what they are real times 24,
highs 13 and above normal 10, normal is 8, below normal is 6, 9, just 4, okay, we'll have to explain
this briefly, it is very, very complicated, but basically in a very simple way, the higher number
is how it gets run, so the processor is running away at stuff, the mouse and the keyboard,
the processor is a real time basically 24 or 30 or something, I think the process number as I forget,
whenever the CPU is idle, it sees if anything is pulling it, it goes through the interrupts,
and so the mouse hits an interrupt, the keyboard hits an interrupt, the hard drive, everything
will hit an interrupt when it needs anything, the computer does go through and check the interrupts
for the highest number, the highest number is actually the king, basically every second it will
check whatever the highest number is, and whatever is requesting part of the processor's time,
and how's a higher number it will win, it is a lot more complicated than that because otherwise,
whatever is the highest process is always taking precedence, there are entire books, doctoral
thesis have been written on this subject, basically the higher number wins, so if you set a process
up to real time, and it wants to do a lot of stuff, you will not do anything on your computer
until it is finished, if Firefox for example is being a river resource hog, which unfortunately
it is sometimes, going to here, right click set process and set it to be below normal,
or idle, or something lower, then what it will do is actually give you your computer back,
because you might find the mouse is not moving because Firefox is taking all the memory,
well now because it's below normal or idle, you move the mouse, it's got a higher number, it
gets priority, explore itself, everything starts as normal, if you find a process is taking up too much,
if you CPU time, just set it down to below normal, and most of the time it's going to give you
a computer back, whatever it is doing is going to take three times longer than normal or something,
because everything else is now getting in a way, but you can still use your computer,
so if you actually wanted to use your computer whilst doing something else, do that,
if on the other hand you just want to leave the computer and let something run, put it up as high,
I really don't recommend doing real time, set something as real time, you pretty much guarantee
your computer will crash, because it can't do anything else, which is not good,
I mean see all the programs here, you can see X4 or XC for example, it's got HK command XC,
which is the keyboard, it's got a couple of extra keys and that's the thing that does that,
AVGCCXC, the Google Toolbar Node Fire command XC, Proce XC, because of course that's what I ran,
as I said it's all this up there and you can see what's running and terminate them, and it's
basically pretty damn good, there's also a search online option, which I don't remember being
there last time, and in fact if we do that, we notice Proce XC now has launched Firefox,
Firefox is running away, it's got a process idea of 2644, it's using flashes on and off,
stuff it yes, just Google searches, basically, nice and simple, but you can see exactly what's
running, what called what as well, so as I said you can see here that X4 or XC called Proce XC,
because of course I'm running a Windows Explorer session and I ran it from there, so X4 or XC
called that, it's basically a pretty damn cool debug tool and it works better as a replacement
for task manager as well, you can do pretty much everything task manager does,
possibly shut down, there might not be an option, oh no, there we go, there's an option to shut
down, it does everything task manager does and does it better, screw task manager use process explorer
instead, Rookit Revealer, open up that, except the license, hit scan, bottom right hand corner,
just hit enter, it's the default button, run stuff, it dumps the registry down, it tells you what
it's doing and then it compares what the registry says the files are on the hard drive and what
files actually are on the hard drive, trying to think of an analogy, Star Trek 6, though
can work out if they fired a torpedo or not, their computer said they fired a torpedo, they were
fairly convinced they hadn't, they went down and counted every single torpedo, found out the
computer had lied to them and it was wrong, that's basically what Rookit Revealer does, it turns
around to windows and says what files are we got, what have we got here, what have we got there,
windows says well we've got you know 43 torpedoes, it then goes and counts manually and finds 44
and says hang on, this isn't right, it will come up with anything that is hidden from windows
itself, the operating system, not necessarily a bad thing, certain things if you're using
Norton, well first of all why are you using Norton, but if you're using Norton, safe delete or
whatever their version of the recycle bin is called, if you're using that what it does it hides
files from the operating system in a bit of a weird way but it makes it so that people can't
find the files but they are available in Norton if you want to delete them, that will turn up
in Rookit Revealer because there's a file on the hard drive, the operating system doesn't know about,
so don't just assume everything you see is bad, most of it isn't to be honest, what have we got
here for example, HKLM which is spreadsheet key, the local machine, software, lick control, lick that
that's LIC, Dan calm down, lick control slash, lick control slash, lick control slash, lick control
bunch of weird character star, LKZ, lots of weird stuff, so basically that's saying here's
something that's hidden and the reason that's hidden is actually that's the license control, I believe
that is ZEDMUD, actually look that is but it's it's something my wife bought and she's got the
license on the computer and that's what it didn't because you don't want just anyone to be able to
see the license, so there's a few weird things like that, basically run it, look on the internet,
see what stuff you've got on there because most of it's not bad, well I'm going to bore that now
because I can, you're going to let it run, it takes, I don't know, half an hour, so it depends
on how big the hard drive is, how fast the computer is, really cool program run it,
TCP view seems to be taking a while, load license agreement, yay, what does it say in a way,
schedule for license, license is, the software is license, not sold, the
screaming only gives you some rights to use the software, the internal materials, all other rights,
and that's applicable law gives you more rights than the despite this limitation,
basically we're not going to give you any chance to do anything unless you really, really
must have to, and even then we're going to argue about it, you may not do anything to this program,
apart from run it, you may not lend the software, so I can't actually give the software or lend
the software to you on a disc, even though it's free download, how stupid is that, you can't export
it, subject to the United States export laws and regulations, the software is as is,
well it says most open source really, so I can't argue about that,
outside the United States if you acquired this software in, sorry let's do the series first,
outside the United States if you acquired this software in any other country, the laws of that
country apply, no shit Sherlock, normally whatever country you end the loss of that country apply,
whatever, so anyway, agree, and it runs stuff, and it tells you what's going on,
what is connected to where, Apple Mobile Device Service XE 1520, all that 1520s,
possibly a process number I'm not quite sure, sure if I actually bothered to read the help it would
tell me, protocol, TCP, local address, this machine name, 27015, that'll be the
port number, local, host 4409 is the remote address, it was looping back on itself for some weird
reason, Google, two-mile net fire is going to Google, fun, they're not, iTunes helper,
all right, okay, the Apple Mobile Device Service XE is connected to it, the iTunes helper,
which is connected back to the Apple Mobile Device Service XE programs, because that's going from
4409 to 27015, so that's what that's doing, LSASS is listening on a couple of ports, but
no actual connections, SV host is doing stuff, systems doing stuff, seems to have net fire
running, not good, but anyway, it's got stuff running, basically if you've got spyware running
on your machine, chances are it's going to try and connect out to the internet, your
TCP view, you will see it, for example, if I try and pretend that something, hey, let's use
internet explorer, that'll be love, always is, internet explorer, we've run that, all right,
so forget Microsoft.com and go back to TCP view, we now see pretty light red greens, greens are
a connection just made, red is one, just ending, we can see internet explorer is going to lots of places,
it is going to a camay.com, it is going to a specific IP address, it is doing lots of things,
it's interesting because I've got an option to resolve, and it's not resolving them,
but it's got lots of connections, it's gone to 777.677.126.50, which I bet will be the Microsoft
website, Microsoft.com, but you can see exactly what's going on, where and what programming is running,
which is pretty cool for checking spyware and stuff, because you can actually see what an
earth it is going, and it shows you things as they're opening, closing, so that is basically the main
tools, except for PS tools, PS exec, so if I run PS exec, it gives me a lot of options,
so I can run, I can separate the processor, so for example to run the application on CPU,
2 and CPU, 4N2-A2.4, I'm just going to run some stuff, PS exec, now to pad XC,
we run that, and let pad kicks in, wow, exciting, it's cool, as I said before, you can run stuff for
other people's computers, and you can actually look at stuff, and you can copy files over,
and you can actually run stuff, and optional user ID, and password, and timeout, and limited users,
and a billion other options, trust me, it really is a cool application, just go down, look at it,
and see what is going on, PS exec, backstarts, backstarts, compute name, or computer, computer,
computer3, and all that, follow name, dashu, for user, dashp, password, dashm, for timeout,
dashs, for running the remote process and system accounts, but it's really cool, you can set the
priorities up, and run everything, and you can put the computer in there, so you can run stuff
on the computers, that's pretty cool, so if, for example, you sent someone an email with an
attached executable, you can put PS exec in to run the program, and you can get it to run under,
this is an account, don't ask me why that might be useful, but someone might find that useful,
and if you do, you're an asshole, and deserve to die, obviously, of course, if you're emailing
them, so please, would you mind running this, that's fine, if you're not asking them to run out,
and making them run it automatically, then you're an asshole, deserve to die, in a slow and
painful death, what else we got here, PS file, run PS file, it says no files open remotely,
that's good, no one's hacking into the vice computer, at least not at the moment,
again, you can see what files are open, remotely, funnily enough, again, if you find there are
files that remotely, it's a possibility that that is an hack attempt, or something similar, so
if something you want to investigate a little further, PS info is trying to access the internet
querying information, and here we go, PS info, it goes off and says it has been running for six
hours and 15 minutes and 20 seconds, it's a Microsoft Windows XP Uniprocessor free kernel version,
product type, product version service, page two, for example, status, error reading status,
figures, internet explorer version seven system routes, windows, processes one,
process speed 2.7, gigahertz, it's a cellar on CPU, 230, it make memory, and a GeForce 4MX 440 SE
video driver, now you may find that useful to find information out about the computer that you're
connecting to, the uptime is probably the most useful, PS kill, it's possibly my most favorite one,
along with PS exec for just screwing around with people, again, allows you to kill stuff on
other people's computers, you're on PS kill, dash T to kill the process and any descendants,
backslash, backslash and then the computer name, with a dash U for use name, dash P for password,
should it be required, and the process ID or the name, process ID can find by running PS list
on the computer itself, which is the next one, PS list gives you a list of all the stuff running,
system is process ID of 4, priority of 8, all that good stuff, remember I was talking about
priorities earlier, you can see the priorities here, most of them are 8, windlogging is 13,
CSRSS 13's, SMSS is 11, still has too many S's in it, you can see exactly what's going on,
PS list will show that and then you can use PS kill to kill any of them, or you can just give it
specifically by name, which you can again pick from the PS list, PS logged on, again pretty similar
to before, tells me that lots of people are actually logged in, but no one is logged in via resource
shares, which is always good, because that chance time means remotely, that would be the
camera, the names of them, the weird computer dollar files and things that are other shares that
works off demands you put in, but doesn't tell you about, and hides them, PS service,
spam the screen entirely, because you list of all these things like WZ, CSVC for the wireless
zero configuration service, would be presumably the SVC, but tells you who started to look what the
state is, stopped funnily enough, it's hardwired in, not wireless, can't be asked with all the
security settings on there, but you can see exactly what's running, what's stopped, and you can actually
start and stop things yourself, if you want, again, on a backslash, backslash, computer name,
dashu for username, dashp for password, then you run the command, if you've got query, config, set
config, start, stop, restart, pause, cont, depend, find security, that can be pretty cool, if you're
trying to run stuff on a remote computer that you really can't be bothered to walk down eight flights
steps and go through the locked door, swipe your card eight times to set up, you can just do it all
remotely, and I think that's about it, that's all the PS tools, that's all the rest of it,
I'm now going to go and work out what an earth the dollar extent and dollar directory
files are, and why they're floating around on my waste computer, I'm sure a quick google wouldn't
like to me on that, I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback, well actually I'm recording
this on the day that the last episode came out, so only two people have actually told me about
how the last one went over, Dave Yates, because I sent him an early version said,
it Dave, let's do this and see what it's like, he came back said, it's great, you're in
natural, and then Dan listened to it, and did love the reference to himself, so hey Dan,
and he enjoyed it, but did complain it was far too midday centuries, so now I've just spent the
last however long it is, because I don't know, I'm running multiple channels and audacity,
so I keep changing and recording bits, because you really don't want me to rumruke it,
I'm going to do this and it doesn't work, so thank you very much, shout out to Dan and Dave,
thank you very much for your comments, this has been Zoke, on Sisson Tunnel's part 2,
and you've been listening to Hacker Public Radio, thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio,
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-C for all of us in the
area, thank you very much, thank you very much, thank you very much, thank you, thank you very, very much, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you

98
hpr_transcripts/hpr0048.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
Episode: 48
Title: HPR0048: Virtualization Part 2: Qemu quickstart
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0048/hpr0048.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:45:00
---
...
Hello and welcome today's episode of Haco Public Radio.
I'll be your host for today, DeepGeek.
Today will be part two in my ongoing series on virtualization technology entitled QMU,
A Quick Stock Guide.
So, you know, I want to talk a little bit about how things are going to proceed with the series in general.
I will be using the Emulator QMU and all the links for all this stuff will be in the show notes for this episode on Haco Public Radio.org.
I will be writing a Doc Dropper's article because I'm breaking down these parts into very, very small pieces.
And I think this episode is going to move so quickly that you really won't need the web-based documentation on Doc Droppers.org.
So, what I want to do is I want to get up and get you up and started with two methods.
One is going to involve a downloading the ISO image for a popular live CD.
And the other method is going to be actually taking the image pre-engineered for QMU and kicking it off.
So, all the more complicated stuff will be for the introduction part, which will be part three.
Things like creating your own virtual machines, disk image file, and the different applications for that will be put north.
Today, we're just going to get up and running, kick off a few windows, and fool around with it.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
So, if you want to far along with me, I want to first make an important assumption that you're using a Linux that relies upon an at-based package-managing system.
Such as, I use Debian Linux.
A lot of people using Ubuntu.
Both these popular distributions, we should be just going through to a root-enable command line, and type in apt-get-space-install-space-q-em-u-avid-enter, and watch your package manager do its thing.
With two downloads, I'm going to need it to make, and the buildings are up to where to get these from.
The first, everyone's favorite, NAPIX STD.
The STD, by the way, stands for Security Tools Distribution, and this is every 10 testers favorite distribution.
It's a live CD, but once you download it, don't bother to burn it to CD.
We don't have to do that for this.
The second thing is, there's a website out there called OSZU.org.
The links up in the show notes are hackpublicare.org, where OS images are, and download the free BSD image.
Go to the link at hackpublicare.org, download free BSD 6.1-REL.qao.img20060526.tore.
Don't try to write it down from what I just said. Read the show notes, find that file, download that, and the NAPIX image, and we can get started.
Do you have to get installed QMU and it will install the system?
The first thing we're going to do is we're going to pick off the NAPIX STD copy.
So how do we do that? Well, first, we change directory into wherever we downloaded the ISO image from a command line.
So pick off your favorite X term, do a CD space, and whatever the directory name is where you saved the ISO file with the NAPIX STD in it, and type in the command QMU space.
Dash sound HW space ES1370 space, dash CD ROM space, and in the file name of NAPIX, NAPIX dash STD dash 0.1.ISO.
And that will just start up a new window, and you'll get the boot for NAPIX STD hit enter, and it'll come right up.
And follow around with it. Have a good time. Check out STD without having to bother with running it off of a CD.
OK, I got to tell you, I was really very tempted to end it right here at five minutes into the show.
But it's literally that simple to just use this software. It's sure you have to use command line, and there are graphical ways of picking up virtual technologies.
But it's just a command and it runs. All right, so the only thing you need to know is that, you know, to get into it, you know, you move your mouse into the box, click it, and begin using it like a regular system.
When you want to break your mouse out of the box, you hold down the control and old buttons on your keyboard, and your mouse goes back to normal, rocking in the whole screen of your desktop.
All right, so now that's one thing, and that will work with any live distribution.
But let's have a look at what it is to download a virtual machine that's already engineered.
So you go to the oszoo.org, and you download the free BSD file at a reference to the show notes, and you can go for your X term or what have you, and you change directory to wherever that is.
So then you're going to have this tall file, free BSD6.1, blah, blah, blah, blah, tall.
All right, so you're going to have to untarge, so you type in tall space, dash xvf space, and then the name of the file, and it will create until unpackage that compressed archive.
And then you change directory into that, the new directory you create when you compress it.
In other words, when you untarge something, it's going to create a subdirectory.
So for me, it was CD space, free BSD6.1.ol.qpow.img, and I was in another subdirectory.
Now I want to just have a look and see what they did.
So I typed in qemuse-img, space info, space, free BSD6.1.ol.qpow.img, and like I said, all these things are in the show notes.
All right, so don't try to copy it for my voice.
Now, qemuse-img, that is the utility that comes with qemuse, so that you can look at virtual disks that are expressed as files on your, on your system.
So you'll see, you'll give you the actual disk size, which is something like 600 megabytes, and it'll give you a virtual disk size of like 10 megabytes.
So you see this, what that's telling you is that this file actually takes up the 600 megabytes, but if you begin saving things and working within this image, you can go up to 10 megabytes, 10 megabytes, with this image.
All right, if you want to backup this image before using it, use a static copy command.
I wouldn't use a drag and drop when file manager to make a backup copy, because it might expand the file out to the full 10 megabytes of size.
So use bash, bash, is the ultimate file manager, you know, use the CP command.
Then I typed in a quick cat space, and all cats read me, where the little blurb that the guy who put together made, and so that the only user was root, and that the password was freeBSD for this image.
Now I knew that, I just kicked it off. All right, here's the command, QEMU, space, freeBSD6.1, REL.qcal.imj.
That's it.
You'll see the boot come up, and after a couple of seconds, you'll have a full Linux boot, I mean, excuse me, a full Linux boot, this is a freeBSD, and you'll have that system in front of you.
So play with your systems, enjoy them. It's that easy.
And on our next episode in this series on virtualization, I will begin introducing the topics of building your own disk images as files, and going to some more detail of what that's involved, and that will be the introduction proper to QEMU.
If you're sitting there listening to this and saying, well, what about other systems? What about VMware? What about Zen?
I don't work with those in day to day. I'm a free software advocate, and so I stick to free software's.
So, you know, I'm going to be working QEMU, but all these concepts will carry over.
So I hope you enjoy that.
Today's gig tidbit. I'm going to continue with my series of greats of computer science.
I want to just mention to you, and Wikipedia is a wonderful place to start.
I want to mention to you a German computer scientist, now passed away recently, Dr. Edgar F. Cod, the 2Ds.
Dr. Cod was the fellow in the 70s, the computer scientist, who introduced the concept of relational database management.
Dr. Cod wrote papers and even published a book, the relational model for database management, explaining what it meant.
He based his vision on database management on a obscure branch of set theory mathematics, where information was expressed in a mathematical way that related to each other,
and then began working towards the definitions of languages that referred, that helped us navigate within very large sets,
and changed forever the face of database industry.
So, he passed away in Florida in 2003, I believe. I don't have the word paid for it in front of me.
But it was an amazing, amazing scientist. Toward the end of his life, he was inducted into the fellows of the ACM,
and after he passed on to the great computer room in the sky, or I love being a ham, excuse me.
The Association for Computing Machinery, named one of their highest awards after him.
So, if you get a chance to read his book, a PDF article, or maybe even go further and actually pursue some of his books,
you also wrote some things on cellular automata, you know, if you've ever heard of the Game of Life, you might be interested in that too.
So, as always, I invite feedback. You want to send me email, hpr at deepgeek.us,
or you may leave a message for me, a private message on the bin rev forms.
My username there, as it is here, is DeepGeek.
I hope you enjoyed the second in our series of virtualization with QMU,
and the next episode will be an introduction proper, where we'll go over, still introducing material,
but we're going to get a little deeper into that one, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
So, this wraps up today's episode of Hacker Public Radio. Please tune in tomorrow for another episode. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-T for all of us here.
Thank you.

149
hpr_transcripts/hpr0049.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,149 @@
Episode: 49
Title: HPR0049: XPlane
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0049/hpr0049.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:45:11
---
music
music
music
music
music
So we're going to take 1,4,000 and reduce back to 2,5, zero knots.
So we're doing that now 1,4,000 at 250 knots, you've got to speed up to 2227.
Thank you.
Delta 71, reduce to 2,5, zero knots.
Let's see what it's on to 250.
It went up to 4,8, so it was off.
It just got to 2,6,0, but 2,4,0, back direct off.
We're 8 out of 10, up to 10, right?
It's going to maintain level 210.
Hello and welcome to this second episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm going to briefly go over explain version 7 and how to do an approach, basic approach.
So back when this was out or when I received it was a good while ago.
This was version 7 once I was playing with it.
I used to know the proper way to do everything and what all the acronyms were.
But this time around, it's kind of a revisit.
And it's similar to Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it's more flexible.
Also, it's a little bit more of a learning curve.
If you've never used the Flight Sim before, you probably want to do Microsoft Flight Sim.
And then mess around with this guy, because there's not a whole lot of tutorials or anything like that in here for you.
Okay, what you'll need is don't need a joystick.
You can, for the Texas speech engine, you can use 18T National Voices, which is kind of interesting.
For the image or game, you can use the retail copy.
Or if you are inclined, you can find a smaller copy that fits on a mini CD, the 8mm.
It's about three, four or five hundred megs.
And it has like San Francisco.
And the rest is just airports.
So you're missing all the textures and all that stuff.
But it's great for portability reasons.
Alright, so you can fly around in circles and take off.
You have the basics down.
You want to land.
Now this is the easiest way.
It might not be the right way.
But this is the easiest way that I found out how to land.
Get the airport code.
In my example, got KLAX.
And the runway is going to be 0.7R.
Now, it'll be a little bit confusing when you look at the runways.
But if you know the degrees, you'll figure it out.
For example, 0.9 is going to be 90 degrees, which is going to be east.
So you know that you're going to be flying that direction on the approach.
Now, I'm sure, like I said, this is the easiest way I know how to do it.
It's probably not the right way.
You're probably supposed to do all kinds of crazy shit before you do any of this.
But get the airport you're going to.
And then the actual field you want to land in.
And then the last thing you'll get is the frequency for it.
So in KLAX, runway 0.7R, I'm going to use 109.9.
Now, all this information is going to be on the plates.
And the only way I've been able to find out how to get the plates you want is move the plane to that location
and open up the plates that are around that area and kind of look around and find an airport you want
and get those values from the actual plate.
And then proceed to go move the plane back to wherever you started from.
There might be in this version a time lapse speed up or slow down.
But I wasn't able to find it.
But once you have your information, you're at three pieces of information, the frequency, the runway,
and the code for the actual airport, you're ready to go.
So the way I do it, I pull down to the GPS, press the down arrow key.
And on the little panel there, we do down arrow clear, clear.
And then init, you put in the code, and then the AIRP key.
Now, any of these acronyms, I don't know, don't care.
I knew them at one point in time, but coming back to this, I just kind of eyeballed my way through it.
Once you get it in there, it'll draw a red line to the direction of the airport.
And that's where you just point your heading.
And you're basically making a B-line.
You're not taking any VORs or anything, you're making a straight B-line straight for the actual airport.
Now, once you get within the block, where you can see it in the plate list,
that's where you can get the frequency and stuff like that.
You can pretty much fly anywhere you want, pull up the plate list,
and land on any airport you want using this method.
Now, once you can see it in the plate view, you see your airport, you'll see the localizer,
and it looks like a little carrot.
Now, once you're within the localizer, the actual navigation deal on the left side
will start to pick up the signal, and then you can use the nav and autopilot
to have it land playing, or at least go in the general direction where it's supposed to go.
Once you get the plate up, and you know which frequency you put in,
you're going to use the nav one or two, it doesn't matter which one,
just as long as the active one is the one you have it set to on the knob.
You're going to set it to the right frequency, and then you're going to move the CRS knob to the right direction.
So, in our example, it's 07R, so we'll set it to 70 degrees.
So, here within the localizer, you get the set to the right frequency, and you're good to go.
It will start once you hit it, and once you pick up the frequency, the nav on the left will move,
and that way you know it's kind of locked in, and that's when you can hit the autopilot.
There's the vertical and horizontal sync.
I've been had some problems with the vertical sometimes, so I don't just automatically click the vertical.
There's something you have to set as far as elevation, or reset the offender, or something that I'm missing,
which I don't feel like reading 7,000 books to figure out what it is.
Alright, so you've got your heading locked on the localizer, and it's going back and forth,
and you're getting lined up and everything.
You want to get your speed down, put the flaps up all the way, put the gears up down,
make sure you have everything prepped and ready to go.
And pretty much all you have to worry about is your altitude from here out,
and then the pitch once you hit the actual landing field.
I use put the flaps on one notch from all the way down, that way I don't have to add the speed too high.
And then right before I hit the actual runway, or right before I'm about to land,
I kill the power, and put on the brakes to max, and that's automatic brakes,
so once you hit the ground, it starts putting on the brakes for you.
Now like I said, in the mini version that I have, if you go anywhere except like San Francisco,
you're going to end up with just an airport in the middle of the air,
and that might be possibly why I'm having problems with the vertical autopilot,
and it's not landing properly, so that might be the reason I'm not sure,
but that's going to be something you're going to miss when you use this smaller ISO.
Alright, some tips. If you're on the approach, you'll see a little icon towards the middle that looks like a plane,
and when you're about to stall, you'll see that guy start dropping.
So what you want to do is keep an eye on that guy, make sure that your nose is where you want it to be,
and make sure that your speed is high enough, and your flaps are up,
that that guy doesn't start dropping.
If he starts dropping, just give it some gas, and you'll be able to come back up,
and either slow the speed down, or put the nose down, or whatever you got to do,
to get it to keep them stalling.
For altitude, I use the hold option and vertical speed.
Vertical speed is good for if you're going to be changing your altitude a lot.
There's the elevator trim, which can kind of go haywire sometimes,
so there's a reset option somewhere, which I haven't been able to find,
to reset the elevator trim if you need to.
But for just up and down motions, I'll use the vertical speed.
In the map view, there's center-gone aircraft,
which is good for if you bring up a plate, and you don't feel like clicking around,
to the center-gone aircraft, you'll know where you're at,
and you can see your approach and all that stuff.
Altitude, so you can just pick a plate, aim the heading in the right direction,
have the frequency in there, and be good to go, and you can just land, you know, wherever you want.
You can also use the flight plan option, which is on the inner key,
and pick a flight plan, pick an altitude, and it'll tell you when to decrease your speed,
increase your altitude, decrease your altitude, et cetera,
and it'll help you out on the approach and stuff too if you're new to it.
That pretty much wraps up this episode.
If you haven't checked that explain, I would.
Check out the new version, and also if you're new to it,
you probably want to try Microsoft Flight Sim.
There's a little bit more of the learning curve or less learning curve there.
And if anybody has any questions, just let me know.
And if anybody's in the Atlanta area, look forward to seeing you at Outer Zone.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Hack or Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to CARO.18 for all of her team.
Thank you.

501
hpr_transcripts/hpr0050.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,501 @@
Episode: 50
Title: HPR0050: Linux Boot Process Part 2B - Grub
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0050/hpr0050.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:47:46
---
Hello, welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio, my name is Dan
Washco and I'm continuing my series of Delinix startup or boot process today with
episode 2b or actually 3 whatever you want to call my episode on grub and no
I'm not talking about those tasty little beetle larvae that a lot of countries
find very nutritious and supplement their protein intake with but I am
talking or slying for food for that matter but no I am talking about the boot
loader of the gods grub the grand unified boot loader this I'm excited to
talk about grub because grub is it's just awesome and I hope that you find grub
as awesome as I do because it's just it is it is fun it is exciting and it is
just all around goodness wrapped up in a little boot loader now a lot of my
information was called from the very informative very useful grub manual which
can be found on the grub website which is very easy to access at www.gnu.org
slash software slash grub that's off the GNU website and grub is a
application under the GNU public license it is currently on version 0.97 which
is the version that most distributions install with and you know one of the
things that's really cool and you probably take for granted is that when you
run your OS you're actually running two kind of systems there I mean well
three if you you could say you got the BIOS which loads in which kicks off the
boot process boot loader which isn't part of the operating system so to speak
it's its own little consider operating system and no other boot loader I've
seen other than grub really exemplifies this and we'll get to that in a few
moments and then your boot loader in this case grub will kick off the loading of
your operating system of choice now what's really cool about grub is not only
do you get to set it up but you can also configure it on the fly unlike
lilo the Linux loader which I talked about last time you install the Linux
loader and you hope it you know you got everything right for the next time you
try and boot grub on the other hand it is not that limited if if something's
wrong grub has essentially three modes there's a menu mode which is
what most people will see when they boot grub if they see grub at all which
provides you a list of definitions OS definitions as you can boot there is the
edit mode where when you're in the menu mode you can press the e button and
begin edit any one of those definitions or there is the command line mode which
allows you to just access the grub command line mode and you could do a whole
lot more on the command line mode which we'll get into shortly now grub has
supplanted lilo as the main Linux bootloader of choice for most
distributions now I do believe slackware is one of the few that are left that
uses lilo to this day as default bootloader arch Linux gives you a choice
and so does Gentoo give you a choice when you're installing the operating
system as to which bootloader you want to use now if if you are at all has a
10 you know you might be familiar with lilo very very familiar with lilo
hopefully after this you will elect to choose to install grub as your default
bootloader for any operating system that you want to run it is that awesome
now most people are not going to have to worry about installing grub pulling
down the sources or building grub yourself or unless you're again running
arch or Gentoo you probably won't even be asked what loader you want to run
you'll be asked do you want to install it in the master boot record or in the boot
partition of your root partition given that I'm not really going to go into the
details of installing grub from source you can get that from the documentation
most people will not have to do that but given that when you install when you
install your your distribution of choice and you go through and it prepares to
install the bootloader unlike lilo or some other bootloaders you don't really
have to have much configured for grub when you run the grub install now there are
a few configuration files and if you read the documentation it's of course a
documentation tries to be operating system agnostic but we're going to be
focusing on documentation for Linux or GNU Linux and where the majority of
distributions install grub and this configuration files will be found in the
slash boot slash grub directory you will also find command grub commands in the
slash S bin or slash UUSR S bin because they're more system specific and as
opposed to general user commands or more for administration now in the boot
grub directory typical files that you will find in there are a menu dot list or
mm menu dot lst which is a general configuration file and it holds the
definitions for the operating systems that you're going to boot additionally
what you will find in there are the stage files for grub now grub boots itself
with at least two stage files the first stage one file is simply put in the
master boot record or boot sector of the partition that you have installed grub
on the purpose of stage one is to load either stage 1.5 or stage two essentially
what stage one does is it sets itself up to encode the location of stage 1.5 or
stage two into the master boot record so it can kick it off now stage 1.5
files generally optional but you're going to find them on a Linux
distribution is what grub needs to read a file system you will see an X2
riser file system XFS file system you will see multiple different types of
stages for being able to read a file systems type and stage 1.5 is usually
installed right or pulled in right after the master boot record so stage one
kicks off stage 1.5 if no stage 1.5 is available it tries to just go right for
stage 2 which is the core grub image which will pull off the file system where
grub was installed will pull out what it needs to set up the bootloader and
begin to boot your operating system of choice now a few other files it might
be in there is a default file which specifies the default image or
definition of boot which we'll get to later also you will find in there other
stages like a stage 2 L Torrito and that's used for creating bootable CD
roms a no grub or I'm sorry an NB grub which is a network boot grub image and a
PXC grub which is a network boot image for using pre-boot execution
now we are not going to cover network booting with grub or creating a
bootable CD in this episode today we're kind of you know don't want to make it
too long additionally we're just more interested in regular Linux systems as
a more advanced topic your version of grub that includes
included with your distribution may not be have grub compiled with the network
booting options so we're going to stick with the the basics for today the
plain vanilla grub now as I said you're probably not going to need to
install grub yourself but just keep it in the back of your mind you are two
basic ways to install grub once you have the software install on your system
of course there is the native which is using a grub boot disk
and using a program called grub install right inside of Linux the native
involves creating a grub boot disk and using the grub interface
to set up an install grub now while they consider this the safer way
to install grub the safest way it is also the most difficult way to install grub
and we're not going to go into many details in here suffice to say that if you
really want to find figure out how to do that read the documentation we're
going to talk about the grub install because it's it's easier of course
translates better to describing that and
I've never had a problem running it so it's not that
risky I don't think any more than any other piece of software you're
installing on your system anyway and the grub install essentially you run grub
install and you pass the device name either a Linux device or a grub device
as an option so for instance you was putting grub dash install then space slash
dev slash hda which would install grub into the masterboot record of the
first IDE disk on your system now we're talking about Linux device naming
here not bsd not grub device naming which I'll cover in a minute
but Linux device naming so if you had a scusy drive in there and you want to
install it on the masterboot record or the scusy drive it'd be grub dash install
space slash dev slash sda for your first scusy device or whatever device you want
now additionally if you wanted to put it in the root or boot partition you would
specify to put partition your your root or boot partition is on so it'd be grub
dash install slash dev slash hda one for example which would be the first
partition on hard drive a one all right now you can
optionally specify the grub device now an example of this would be grub dash
install space open parenthesis hd zero closed parenthesis which would be the
first or the masterboot record on the first hard disk
all right now in addition to and I'm going to cover the grub device naming in
just a second but bear with me in addition to running you know specifying the
link the device that you want to install and you may need to specify
where the images are stored for instance grub install
a space dash dash root dash directory equals slash boot slash grub would say
and then a space dash slash dev slash hda would say all right install grub into masterboot record
the root directory for grub is going to be under the slash boot slash
grub directory is that's where you're going to find the images that you need to kick
off to uh to perform the rest of the install
all right now let's get into grub device naming because it's a little different
than what probably most people are probably used to and might throw you at
first as you're reading through the grub documentation
for specifying a device and grub you put the device
inside parentheses okay and you're basically going to be using two types of devices
hard drive hard drives or floppy drives there's also cd drives there too but we're
we're looking at block drives and floppy drives in a sense so the standard naming
convention for any like hard drives scuzzy cd-round drive hard drive flash drive
any drive block device is hd okay so hd plus the number
a comma and then another number okay the first number is the device the second
number is the partition on a device for instance
you have a hard drive in your computer id hard drive or scuzzy hard drive
you want to install grub or you're going to be looking at the first drive
okay it's going to be hd zero inside of parentheses
if you want to look at the first partition it's hd zero comma zero inside of
parentheses now i don't know if you caught this i said the first partition the first
device i gave them both label is zero that's because grub's naming or
numbering starts with zero so zero is the first
device or partition one is the second device or partition and so on
so think of it different than linux naming which does like
hda a alphabetical letter a for first and then
a number for the partition number one hda would be equivalent to hd zero
hda one would be equivalent to hd zero comma zero all right
in addition to that floppy drives follow the same kind of naming convention
generally you're not going to specify a partition on a floppy drive so you're
just looking at like fd zero for floppy drive one fd one
so on now interestingly um there's another way that you can specify a
device and that is using hexadecimal or
decimal number of the bios drive or how it's
specified in the drive for instance on my triple e pc
they have grub setup to look at the device zero x eight zero
and what that means is zero x eight zero is a hard disk just like hd
it's a hard disk one zero x eight one would be hard drive two or hard disk two
and again it does not matter whether we're talking about a flash drive
flash device any block device zero x eight one or zero
um flat floppy drives are just specified with a zero so floppy one is zero
floppy two is one floppy three is two you get the idea
so that is excuse me there that is how use grub does its device naming and it's
important to know that because you need that in the configuration file and you
need that for running the command line um now what's cool about grub again when
we get talking about the command line is it has tab completion so you can
you can use the grub command line to figure out what devices that you have in
a system so if you were to sit down right now okay and you were to open up
the terminal and you were going to fire up grub okay which is now more
more than likely you uh not going to have it in your path because it is in
it is in the uh i believe user s been
directory user s been if you were to fire that up and type in root and hit tab
or open up open up open parentheses hit root open parentheses and tab
and uh it would start to auto fill in for you just like tab completion on the
command line so root open parentheses tab will fill in the devices that are
able to be set as a block device
by the root command it'll show you now for instance when i do it on my
triple e pc root open print space open parentheses tab
it does hd 0 comma 0 same thing as 0 x 8 0
okay that's the flash device that i'm able to boot from on here
now if you're in grub right now uh you want to
just you know hit enter or back space over what you just typed in
and hit quit to get out of the command line uh grub command line okay
now so you got grub installed and you're already to rock and roll with it
and let's talk about the the one configuration file probably the main one
that you might be most interested in and that's the menu.lst file
the menu.lst file the general configuration for grub is where you
specify your operating system definitions similar to lilo grub is set up
with two main sections there's the general selection section at the top
the first part of the file and then there's your
os or your definition section which is the second part of the file
now in the menu.lst again keeping the back of your mind when we're talking about
it's particularly devices and just about anything grub uses 0 as the first
device it definition or whatever one as the second that's important
always start your numbering with 0 work from there
now in the general settings the first section
grub device grub device naming let's say section 0
all right you have the default you have it with different commands you can put
in it for instance you can put in default
and then the default definition to use a boot remember again starts with 0
so if you set default to 0 it looks the first definition default to 1
looks for the second definition okay and so on
you can put a command in there called timeout
timeout is the number of seconds before the default
definition is loaded now if you didn't specify a default or you look in your
grub menu.lst file and don't see a default
in there that just means the default is set to the first
definition 0 definition number 0 so the timeout will show the menu the grub
menu for the specified number of seconds
and if nothing is done no intervention it'll just kick off the boot
process and begin booting that first default
device or i'm sorry definition right there
simple enough just like lilo but it doesn't specify intent of the second
like lilo does it specifies it in a second so keep that in mind too
if you specify a timeout is 50 it's going to wait 50 seconds
not 50 microseconds i believe it's what lilo uses so you
you want to set it to five for five seconds
some other things you can specify in there which we'll get to in a few minutes
is called a fallback fallback definition is used
as a safety gap in case your first definition doesn't work you can specify one
or more fallback definitions which we'll cover in a few minutes
you can change the color of the menu and the text and highlighting with the color
command the color command takes two parameters
the normal and highlight which essentially equates to
foreground and background color now look at you know see the documentation
for the list of colors available but be aware that only eight of the 16
colors that are available can be used for the background
foreground can have any of the 16 colors but the background can only consist of
black blue green cyan red magenta brown or light gray
you cannot have a yellow background i don't know why but you just can't
now you can have a yellow foreground on a green
but you can have a green background foreground on a yellow
that's just the limitation of it but beware of your color choices here so you
don't end up not being able to see anything or puking when you look at it
of course you can always change those on the fly with with the grub command
when you're booting which we'll cover in a few minutes
after the general configuration and the menu.lst file you have the OS
definitions this is where you specify the definitions that
the operating systems that you want to boot
simple enough first line in your OS definition
title so title space equals space and the name of the OS
be descriptive for instance slackware 2.6 0.22
kernel you can have spaces in there
punctuation in there stuff like that this is just an informative title for
now i have seen in specifying in a configuration
i have seen that it is when you specify in the menu.lst i've seen them both
use uh equals like default equals something
or not using an equals so it would be like root and
specifying the root information um it seems kind of arbitrary as to whether
or not you need to specify an equals there or not but just be aware of that
seems you can get away without specifying the equals you might hear me say
equals just for you know making it a little clearer that you're setting the
value of this okay so title is the name
for the definition after title on a new line root
and specify the root partition to boot
now this must conform to the device naming structure okay
for instance root space parenthesis hd 0 comma 0
closed parenthesis is disc 1 partition 1 um just remember that 0 is 1
1 is 2 and so on next line would be kernel and you're going to specify the
full path to the kernel on your root partition now for example online it would
be kernel space slash boot slash in a kernel name now in addition to that
you can pass any other kernel parameters that you want to at this point
just like in lilo you can specify specific kernel parameters this is where you
would add them to the line right after the kernel image
following the kernel image you're probably going to want to have your in-it
rd or your initializing ram disk image so it's in-it-rd space then the path to
in-it-rd image example in-it-rd space slash boot slash
in-it-rmfs-eepc.img for the in-it-rmd image
that's simple that's all you need after that at which point
you can boot just about any Linux system using those commands
now there's another option that you might need in there for different operating
systems which is the chain loader it loads a file has a
chain loader and then she used primarily for non-multiboot operating
systems like windows or dots or operating systems with faulty bootloaders
like SCO's system set or SCO Unix 7 yeah crap I forget the name of it anyway
we'll cover chain loading in a few minutes but title root kernel in-it-rd
essentially that's all you need okay so you got your menu.list
you got everything set up grew grubs installed and again
I recommend installing it in a masterboot record like Lilo unless you have
certain you know requirements or or species you know that meet your
cases I've never had a problem installing a bootloader in a masterboot record
contrary to how many people or how much documentation will hem and haun say
oh it's risky risky you might not want to do this I've never had a problem
I think it's the easiest way to go especially when you're using a bootloader
of the God's Grub what else could you want
I think what really makes Grub cool I discovered a lot of the other bootloaders
I've used is when you're using it on boot when you booted up
more than likely most systems you're going to come right into the grub menu
is going to list your OS definitions and I'll give you some other text in there
like you know highlighted definition using in the arrow keys
and press e if you want to you know enter if you want a boot e if you want to
edit or press c for the command line now as you do that
so simple enough let's talk about
editing an item in the list in the menu list okay so you boot up grub
your your definitions right there your your OS
you click the e button you are going to be presented with the syntax for that
definition you can then proceed to edit any one of those lines by
moving the arrow key and pressing the e button
to edit that line you'll be given all that line
and you can use basic batch movement on their control b
to go to the front line control e to the end of the line and so forth you use the arrow keys to move back and forth
you can add stuff delete stuff on that line and when you're finished you simply press enter
and it writes back there now let's say you wanted to add an additional line
you go through the line above the line you want to add
where you want to add the new line and you press the okay and it's going to add another
line after the current line that you're on so you want to delete a line
okay you're on a line press the d and it will delete the line
now when you're finished with all your changes you simply press the b button to boot that
definition now say you don't want to keep your changes that's fine too hit the escape
button and it's going to return you back to the menu and ignore all the changes that you made
you're good to go now the next thing that you could do
aside from editing a definition is going to the command line mode
now command line mode is the same thing as the grub command line mode when you're in your operating
system and typing grub you could do some really cool stuff on here you can uh
this is where you will be taken to if you boot grub without a menu.lst file
and you can specify all the exact commands that you find in
ammenu.lst file on the command mode and a whole bunch more in the command mode which is entered
by hitting c at the menu list or if you don't have a menu list defined you type c
and it will bring you in command mode and you can type help and it'll list all the commands
that you you want to do and what what command line mode allows you to do in there is like
yeah allows you to in a sense you know write your own
definition if you really wanted to undo some other stuff you can browse your file system so
long as it can recognize the file systems that you want to browse it has a stage files for it
for instance to browse my my root file system which is on on the first hard drive which is
a scusy drive on my laptop because it's a say to drive sd1
sda partition one i would type root space open parenthesis 0 comma 0 close parenthesis
and it enter at which point then i can use the cat command can catenate or to cd to change
directories and i can move into that file system which is really cool and then i can cat files in
there and i can view the entire contents of the file system tech files and every text files
and everything just by you know mounting attempting to mount these partitions and moving into them
through grubs command line interface you might say oh my god what about security and you know
that means anybody can look at the contents of the file and yeah but we'll talk about some of
the things you could do to protect from that happening okay so the command line is really cool
if you're any command line you can press escape key to return back to the menu just like you
couldn't edit mode now what's cool about these capabilities is let's say you screw up
and you messed up your boot process if you're using arch Linux and you're using lilo and you
boot your system and you forgot to run lilo after you update the kernel you're kind of screwed
all right you can end up with an unbeatable system let's say you're testing a kernel out and you
you add another definition you want to boot that kernel and you messed up on the syntax you can
easily correct it on the command line right there through the edit mode or through the command line
mode and you're back up to running again in in no time it's not as limited as lilo whereas if you
screw something up you better have a boot disk candy or a rescue CD because you're going back
back to the end of the bus jack starting all over again anyway that's handiness
of grub right there as a rescue situation when you screw up on that note I always recommend having
a backup kernel whatever boot loader you use that you know will work and that is good and we're
going to cover that in a few minutes to some other things that you could do but keep that in the
back of your mind you know because if you upgrade somewhere messing around always have a kernel
that you know you can boot and it works right anyway because of the power and capabilities of grub
allowing you to access your file system you might want to save yourself how am I going to
protect my file system or protects you know from people snooping around well grub does offer
some password protection in there and you have two possibilities of protecting you have one is
protection from editing or entering the command line mode on two is protection from booting you
can prevent them from being able to boot a definition or all definitions for that matter unless it
provides a password protecting from editing what you need to do is you need to use the password
command in your in your menu list in the general section of the configuration you put in the password
you put the word password and then either the password in plaintext or the MD5 hash of the
password and in addition to that you can specify a configuration file to load as like an admin
configuration file in addition to the standard configuration file so if they type in the correct
password it would load a different configuration file with different options that they have in there
anyway grub provides you an easy way to convert your password into an MD5 hash
if you type in on your command line or in the terminal grub dash MD5 dash crypt it will ask you
for a password you know just like using the password command you type in your password it'll ask
you for it again it'll type it in an output an MD5 hashed version of that password
additionally you can you can just type MD5 crypt from the grub command line to get the MD5 version
of the password very simple um you add that to the general configuration file then when they
when you boot the system up and if they want to edit the command line mode or
edit mode they have to provide they have to first hit the p key and it's your prompted for the
password enter the password and then it'll let them in if they don't enter the right password
and no no no entry no lucky lucky they're locked out additionally you can prevent people from
booting certain definitions are all definitions by adding the word lock to each after each title
of the definition that's it you have to set it up like you're you're editing for the command line
or you know you have to put the password in the general configuration but you put lock down after
the title in each definition and if they try or an attempt to boot that definition they will be
prompted to enter the password first okay now let's talk about some fallbacks here and stuff
like that that you can secure yourself when you're doing some testing of kernels that you've
compiled yourself or or or whatever you're doing um you can do a boot once only which will attempt
to boot the system using a different definition that you specify and if it fails it will fall back
to your default specification that's simple it's good for testing a kernel and uh what you do is
you add this line to the general configuration section of the menu dot lst you add default space
saved now that tells grub to read a file called default in the uh slash boot slash grub directory
which specifies what definite definition uh to use to boot for the first time okay now you
add your new definition after your good definition and after the good definition before the new one
the last line that you add after uh you know everything to boot is save default all one word
s-a-v-e-d-e-f-a-u-l-t then after the new test definition you add the line saved default s-a-v-e-e-d-e-e-f-a-u-l-t all
one word space zero now what that does is when you boot the first definition it saves that definition
list the zero what it is to the default file under boot slash boot slash grub default it saves zero
because it's zero the first definition um if you boot the first definite or the uh first
definition the test one okay what that does because this is a boot only is it attempts to boot that
and it writes right directly after it attempts as it's tempting to boot it writes that file
save default to default file zero so that the next time grub runs it attempts the boot
it looks at the save default and boots the first or good definition on here okay so if
something happens and it doesn't boot properly uh you can reboot the machine and it would just
automatically put you back into your main one um by default again remember zero is one any other
numbers is is one less so zero is one one is two so forth now after you're done editing your menu
dials t file you save it then you need to run this command on the command line uh slash s bin slash
grub dash set dash default space one now that puts a one in the uh boot grub boot slash grub slash
default file tells that when grub goes to boot next time to try and boot the first definition
automatically the second you know save sorry second definition not the first one definition
number one second definition when that runs it sets the default back to zero afterwards and
that way you can get right back in your system no problem because you have a good definition now
you have the option of providing fallback definitions to grub fallback definitions will keep
trying to boot the fallbacks in succession until one is successful once it finds a successful
one it's going to save that to the default file what what definition that is so every time after
there it will just boot the successful one until you go back and fix it so like the the um
boot once only use you're gonna still need to put in the uh save save or i'm sorry default space
saved in the general configuration then after that you specify the line fallback all one word
f-a-l-l-b-a-c-k space and then each fallback definition that you want to use uh with the space
after them so like fallback space one space two would go fallback definition two then the
definition three if the first default definition fails uh it will try one if that succeeds it will
it will boot uh the second definition it will then try the third definition of the second
definition fails uh and then after each definition that you specify you provide the line you
had the line save default space fallback so it's save default all one word space fallback all
one word so what happens then is it will try each uh definition you have specified in the fallback
once it finds one that will boot successfully it'll save that um that definition you know the
fallback it'll save the next number or the next number if it wasn't successful it'll keep going
to the next one okay uh it will system will try each fallback in succession until successful
boot then save the successful um successful one to the default file simple enough now
neither one of these sections is going to help solve a problem of where the concurrent
actually does boot but fails after that like for instance you didn't
provide it in an RD file so it can't find or read the uh partition file system partition where
your root partition is you can't read that partition uh that's not going to help you out here okay
you're still going to end up you know to grub is successfully booted the or kernel and that's
all that it does um in such a case again you might need to remember you should have a fallback
default kernel that you can boot to that works that's successful so in your list of fallbacks
you know you might have to manually go down and specify that one backup kernel that you have
that always works because your other kernels may fall back to a success but fail during a boot
process understand what I'm saying Jack of course you do because you're smart if you want smart you
wouldn't be listening I want to wrap this up by covering some additional commands that you can
use in the menu list or command line or editing mode um when I talk about a command I'll explain
briefly what it does I'll tell you where it can be used uh the hidden command that is specified
in the menu you can specify in the command but you know I don't know why you really want to what
what the hidden command does is it hides the grub menu unless the escape key is pressed during the
timeout phase so when your system tries to start the boot day if you provide provide the command hidden
in there it will hide the grub menu so you won't see anything even though it does exist you'd
have to press the escape key to get to it the hide command is in the general section you would actually
I'm sorry you would hide in the uh definition section uh you would hide a partition from booting
from the booting OS now this is primarily only useful for DOS or Windows you would hide and then
the device name of the partition you want to hide like for instance if you had a primary partition
that had Linux installed and then your second primary partition had Windows installed
you would hide the first primary partition from Windows so that it would think it's on the primary
partition because Windows and DOS want to be on the primary partition first primary partition
subsequently you can use the unhide command to unhide a partition that's used in the menu
you can use them on a command line too if you're booting from command or in the edit mode
boot is basically used for command line or editing a menu entry you would type in boot and it would
attempt to boot everything that you have specified the cat command is primarily used in the command line
mode which will list the contents of a file so as I said before you can browse to a file on the
file system on a partition and type in cat for instance cat slash atc slash fstab which will
your fstab file uh chain loader I briefly mentioned chain loader when booting other operating
systems chain loader loads a file as a chain loader and it can use the block list notation now
block list notation block list is a file that does not appear in the file system
an example of this is like the windows bootloader would appear in the block the block one of the
device not block zero which is the master boot record but might appear in block one so you
would specify to the chain loader uh chain loader space plus one when you're trying to boot the
operating system windows and it would try to load the file in the first block of the partition
block number one actually not block zero but block number one and hopefully it will work it's
used for um oh s's with a defective bootloader or for booting windows and dots which
maybe they have a defective bootloader too I don't know fine command is uh pretty simple
fine command will start shooting uh fine and then the name of the file you want found will search
for the file in all the mountable partitions uh just like a regular file command and it will
display the full path to the file that it finds halt command is using command line mode is used
to halt the system uh again I have briefly mentioned help which will display a list of all the
commands and if you type in help in the command name will display the list for that help file
pause is uh used in the menu it you can provide some text after the pause and it would display that
text and will wait for a prompt from the user to press any key to continue on you wouldn't really
use that in command or edit mode it would make any sense uh quit is using command line mode quit will
exit the command line or edit mode and go back to the main menu mode uh reboot is used in the command
line mode again which will reboot the system um now the root command which I briefly mentioned
before it will set the device to root and attempt the mount and get the information of the device
so if you type in root space uh parenthesis hb hd 0 comma 0 it will attempt to set the root
device to the first partition on the first drive and then you can cd into it or cat into it by
specifying the device device and then slash in the path uh you could also use the uh no you can
use the command root no verify all one word which will attempt the mount the root to uh it will
set the root device but not attempt to mount it well I hope that this little introduction to grub
has been informative so the next time you are uh booting your Linux machine because it's a laptop
and you didn't want to waste the battery transporting it to work because you know Linux machines
don't really need to be rebooted that much and if you're rebooting it on a regular basis
god ask yourself why anyway so you're booting you know your system and you pop up to the grub
menu take a minute to pause and stop and check it out and see what you can do and have fun with it
uh unless you know you know you read these commands that we're talking about your chances are
you're not going to break anything but you're going to have learned something new and have fun
doing it as always remember hacker public radio is community sponsor community driven if you are
interested in educating people on a subject that you're pretty familiar with or you want to learn
to subject you're not familiar with and then educate people get in touch with uh the hacker public
radio crew off the website and uh you know make an episode or two we're always looking for people
and uh if you have any questions comments you can send your email to dan d a n n at the linuxlink.net
or i'll check out the comment section for this episode i thank you very much i hope to have a
next another episode out very soon uh i think the next one is going to talk about options that you
can pass to the kernel when you're booting or who the hell knows what it will be but uh it'll be
something to do with the linux boot up and start a process again thank you very much and you have a
wonderful happy hacking day. Thank you for listening to hacker public radio
hpr-sponsored by caro.net so head on over to caro.net for all your hosting needs
you

105
hpr_transcripts/hpr0051.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,105 @@
Episode: 51
Title: HPR0051: TalkBox
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0051/hpr0051.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:45:58
---
music
Hello, this is the MeroVinci coming to you today for Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm going to take a little side-track from my discussions of virtualization simply
because DeepGeek is also covering virtualization and a topic that I've definitely found very
very interesting, so it's a topic I do not want to discuss too and depthily to ultimately
turn people away from virtualization.
So instead, today I'm going to talk about another set project I've been working on that
is commonly known as a talk box.
Now a talk box was originally used back in the 60s, according to Wikipedia, was originally
used by Pete Drake and from Pete Drake it was also used by Stevie Wonder's, you used
in a George Harrison song, but the talk box pretty much became a mainstream instrument
with Peter Frampton and his album, Frampton Comes Alive, and you know everybody's familiar
with the single, do you feel like we do?
And from there is when it really picked up steam and moved on, other performers like Bon Jovi,
Frank Roger and Sam have used it all the way up to Slion, the Family Stones, and even
today it's been used by rappers periodically, as well as the food fighters have covered
it and many, many others throughout the years.
Now there is something that you threw my research of the talk box and you know looking
at the Wikipedia page, looking at other pages, it's found it very interesting that there's
a bit of a controversy over the origin of the talk box and that Bob Heel claims that
he invented the talk box, that he was the first person to produce the talk box and even
today that if you buy a talk box from your favorite musicians catalog, you will buy the
Heel talk box, the H-E-I-L, but apparently there is also a device from custom electronics
that was referred to as the bag, which apparently has the same concept of a talk box and works
in the same principle as a talk box.
And so you might be asking, well how does the talk box work?
And a talk box works by taking an output signal from an amplifier, so normally this is used
with a guitar but is not limited to a guitar.
So from the guitar amp, some way is playing the guitar, it's plugged into an amp.
From the amp it goes out to the main speaker that everybody here is for the guitar, but
then also it splits and goes out to a secondary speaker.
Now this secondary speaker has some sort of cone or funnel or something like that attached
to the top of it that has a tube leaving the top of the speaker, the top of this extra
speaker, and the tube runs usually up a mic stand and is sitting right next to a microphone.
So what this does is as a person plays the guitar, it not only comes out the main amplifier
for everyone to hear, but it also comes out the secondary speaker up this tube in which
case normally a vocalist would step up to the microphone where the tube was in their mouth.
So now we have this guitar sound coming through the tube into the vocalist's mouth and then
the vocalist will move their mouth as if they're singing and instead of letting their vocal cords
produce the noise and their mouth shape the noise and produce words, instead they let
that guitar sound be the noise in the mouth or the audio in the mouth and the mouth shapes
that to produce similar to words or similar to words which then comes out of the mouth
back into the microphone and then out the house PA for the house speakers for everyone
to hear, which is why a lot of Peter Francis do you feel like I feel? He's playing the guitar
as he's mouthing the words, do you feel like we feel and that's pretty much what you hear
is, do you feel like we feel like we do, whatever that is I've already forgotten.
Now this is different from how a vocoder works, a vocoder, I'm sure many people are familiar
with the vocoders, but a vocoder takes a vocal signal, takes the vocal sound as it comes
through the microphone and then processes it and analyzes it and processes it to give
it a different sound or a different noise like a computer sounding voice or something like
that, two different methods which I think ultimately could replicate the vocoder could
ultimately replicate the same thing as a talk box, however they do work physically different.
So as I've been researching talk boxes this weekend, I found that there's a bunch of
people on the internet, like there's a bunch of people on YouTube who have made videos
of themselves making what's referred to as a ghetto talk box. Now a ghetto talk box is as it
sounds it's creating a talk box, ghetto estically I guess, or in a ghetto fashion and pretty much
involves just taking a secondary speaker of some sort and putting your own tube over
that speaker and allowing the sound to come through that speaker. Now what a lot of people
are doing is they're just taking a simple pair of computer speakers that they have line
around, they usually seem to be powered speakers so that way you know they have the speaker
has its own amplifier to power the speaker and just taking these things apart using some
sort of a parabolic bowl shape device or some sort of bowl to enclose the speaker and usually
the amp as well in which case so they'll enclose the speaker, drill a hole into the bowl and
then stick their vinyl tube down in there or stick their tube down in there. Now typically
the tube is vinyl or some sort of plastic and it's also commonly about half an inch in
diameter for the outer diameter. Now this tube you can pick up anywhere, your favorite hardware
store, Lowe's Home Depot, I definitely bought mine at Home Depot for like about 10 foot
for I think it was like three bucks total you know real cheap stuff and for the speakers
I used is yes I had a pair of random speakers line around and I pretty much just you know
use a screwdriver, pry them open. I cut off the second the left channel that was with
my speakers because ultimately I didn't need it, excuse me, cut off the left channel
and went through our cabinets here at the house, found a topware bowl, drilled a hole in
the topware bowl with my drum, stuck the tube down in there and put the bowl over the
speaker and you know tried to use it as a talk box. Now we'll admit I didn't really
get the greatest results out of this so instead my good friend the Reverend Bill he came
up with this the idea of maybe I should take a funnel and put a funnel over the speaker
in which case I did we had an extra funnel line around and I stuck the funnel directly
onto the speaker and kind of taped it down and then stuck my hose on the end of the funnel
and it actually works fairly fairly well but as I've gone back and looked at some of these
designs for how to build a talk box everybody's everybody pretty much says that you need to
have like an airtight seal between the speaker and the edge of the and the end of the tube
so that way you know that all of the sound from the speaker is going straight to the tube
you know the sound's not bleeding off anywhere else and and going other places which is also
what some of the videos you'll see on the internet you know people are like there was one
guy who took his talk box and stuck it all inside of a large like rubber made container
and he used that to help dampen the sound around it so that way the sound from that speaker
didn't bleed out everywhere else. There was another guy who used who used like two plungers
that he pressed together and that helped trap the sound you know within within the plungers
and it seemed to work really well and using the funnel idea you know does seem to work
pretty well although I do have an issue I mean I can still audibly hear my secondary
speaker as well as you know the tube as it's in my mouth and I'm making I'm making the
noise so I just wanted to share with you guys the talk box and just some of the some of
the things that I've used it are some of the information that I found out about it there's
definitely tons of YouTube videos as well as there's a handful of instructables on how
to how to create a talk box I'll definitely include a link to some of these instructables
as well as maybe a few of these YouTube videos that I found were most helpful in the creation
of the talk box.
Thank you for listening to H.P.R. sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C.A.R.O.N.C. for all

746
hpr_transcripts/hpr0052.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,746 @@
Episode: 52
Title: HPR0052: UCLUG: Newbie Shell Scripting
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0052/hpr0052.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:49:36
---
.
Can you film for us evening?
Alright, hey, Yom.
Hey, James, they call you James.
I'm James.
They call me James.
Welcome to the link, shoes, or scruples.
I recognize people that I know I don't recognize people, but I do recognize something.
There's people I haven't seen before, so good, that means maybe that they're newbies.
Yes, no?
We're supposed to stand up between our feet.
Yes, stand up.
I stand up.
Or we're not allowed to sit down.
No, but this is our newbie session in shale scripting.
So all right, so let's, let me get, you know,
my preparation is kind of, I just read up on,
I caught up on stuff.
I didn't really prepare slides or anything like that.
So we're going to just kind of do something on the fly.
But in this process, I'll be teaching you all how to
shale script.
All right, so let's start out and so that I can gauge what,
what we need to do.
Does everyone know what shale scripting is?
Is there anyone, let me ask it this way?
Does anyone not know what shale scripting is?
Y'all.
That's not a leading question.
That's just a lot.
Anyone not know what it is?
OK, that's good.
All right, so good.
Does anyone, all right, so, all right.
I need to know what I need to be teaching.
What does the newbies that have not used shale scripting,
have not done shale scripting, what would you like to know
exactly?
Do you know what it is?
Can they not start?
Yeah, you now have to start.
All right, you now have to start a shale script.
Here's one that I'm going to have for it.
OK.
Next to a couple of them, all right?
I've got a bunch of PHP scripts.
OK, actually.
That enclosed my sequence.
In general, I'm running at that time on web, right?
But I wrote all the interface I can run with people with.
It's a wiki.
Wiki?
No, OK, so what else?
I'll tell you all about it later.
But anyway, so I've got all these interfaces that
are basically written in PHP with my sequence in title.
And I want to schedule, I'm going to have a schedule
on the front end, and I've got five or six
together with this script that I can all, you know,
whenever.
Right.
I mean, that's basically one.
So the crime, crime, we'll call it when you want it.
Well, I'll do it's magic.
And put that into a whole thing, all of a sudden.
Right.
OK.
I guess.
All right, so what does anyone else need?
Since I have a feeling that you probably know how,
I don't know who you are.
I'm first time here.
OK.
I mean, I've done a class of people type of shell scripting.
OK.
I know a lot about it.
So then I'll need to talk to you then.
No, I'm going to vote you like that.
No, I'm sorry.
Honestly, I just thought.
That's fine, you guys on the internet.
I just came into my eye and you don't even
know what you're doing in shell script.
OK, cool.
That's cool.
I have this here.
Basic set and off without closing, you know, at 8.
Set and off.
OK.
Is that a possibility?
Set and off without closing, then it's a problem
to do to have a tolerance set with life.
Yeah, probably would be.
It's better to consider it than our regular expression set.
Yeah, they have it on books.
But OK.
Well, all right.
So shell scripting is basically taking what you do
on the command line and putting it into a script
into a program that you can run.
Everything I want is I'm sure you all know it.
That's because everyone knows what shell scripting is.
You know what shell scripting is?
Is it, that's most commonly used to have aliases?
What's that name?
Isn't there like a shell script that handles aliases?
That is a whole ton of aliases.
Like when you log in?
Yeah, I think there's a log in shell script
that I'm actually running when you log in.
Yeah, exactly.
There's the profile, the dot-pro file, dot-rc.
And that's everything.
OK, well, let's see.
All right, so will you give us an explanation on your battle?
All right, so I'm going to VIs my editor choice,
but you can use whatever you like.
So just bear with me and pay no attention
to the man behind the screen.
Yes, I think we can all put it one time.
Pops up and more.
Make it a little bit bigger.
OK, we'll do that.
Hey, that's that.
No, no, no, I've tried once, so try me.
I can.
I'll ask you.
Yeah, I want to see this on YouTube later on.
You know, I'm going to look at the cell.
I'm going to publish it.
All right, how's that?
A little easy.
You want to bigger than that?
You can erase it.
Yeah, I'll put this in.
Look, look, I can't see three little screen.
I can't really do that for all it's for.
That's a good one.
OK, we go up.
I can go up one more.
That means less to.
No, yeah, if you would, that'd be great.
All right, but there you go.
OK, can you see that then?
Do it here and take off the flag.
Oh, no.
I just like it to that.
All right, so let's see.
All right, so let's call it back up.
Back up your web thing, right?
I'll give it the dot it.
Well, yeah, it's well, I'll give it a dot bash extension
so that you know that it's a bash shell script.
Yeah, oh, you type that.
All right, let me think about it.
All right, so the first thing that you need in a shell script
is your Shebang.
Now, normally, anyone that starts with it with a sharp,
oh, this is called Shebang, because it's sharp.
Bang, Shebang.
Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy,
Shebang, Shebang, Shebang, Shebang.
OK, so a sharp bang or pound exclamation point
tells the operating system that you
want this file to be executed by this program.
In our case, we're going to want it to be slash bin bash.
Now, the title of this is Sheal Script,
because you don't have to use bash.
There are others out there.
There's corn chill.
There's born shell.
There's normal born shell.
This is bash, it's born in shell.
Then there's Z-shell.
There's T-shell, C-shell, ash, ash, ash.
I'm not sure what it's up to.
I think that's my other C-shell.
And she sells the C-shell.
Now, R-S-A-S.
Right, right.
We're strictly shaken that that true C-type syntax.
We'll see what it all looks like.
But I'm most familiar with bash.
I used to be most familiar with T-shell, but you know.
All right, so anything that starts with a pound sign,
except for the first line, is a comment.
From the pound sign to the end of the line, is a comment.
So we're going to say just something.
Just to back up, my p2p.
OK, so that's just a comment.
That would be helpful if you put it in, because you're
going to look at it later and say, what the heck is this?
OK, so all right.
So let me stop your intro.
OK, you're going to do some kind of copy and follow.
Whatever way.
Right, under bash.
But now, let's say that I wanted to actually execute PHP.
From a shell script, I would put PHP up there,
so that it wouldn't be bad.
Sure.
Yes, OK.
Can't sorry, but it's something like that.
It's going to be like the PHP command line.
Yeah, we did.
It wouldn't know, but I have to schedule these jobs
to run automatically.
Right.
And so, I mean, I'm running PHP to the command line.
Right.
As opposed to going to the web browser.
Right, because you're not going to do it a few.
Right, when you're going to do the PHP command line,
and what I'm saying, though, is that if I wanted to reference
my speed, inside, you're not actually
called a PhD file.
Right, but actually put the PHP in this script.
I would put PHP up.
OK, now what I've got here is assume
you've got a PHP program, right?
Yeah, you want to reference here.
Now, if you want to do what you want to do,
you want to put that PHP embedded inside this shell script.
Right, right?
OK, so let's do that.
So, we want to interpret it through.
Is it user been PHP?
I would just like to use it as a bit of E and V space
to be able to think that I'll call P and V wherever it is.
And that.
I don't say I just got it with a few dashed log
in the environment or with the default.
As I say, yeah, I'm going to assume
that that's where PHP exists.
It may not.
And then you want to, let's say I'm not
as familiar with PHP, so you have to give me some help.
So, in your scripts, whatever your program is
from this point on, and I guess you
want to do it here, document.
So, in the file.
So this is your PHP stuff that gets
interpreted by PHP, and then you
got the end of your marker, which I call it, in the file.
But it doesn't have to be anything.
So, this is an example of a here document
that the shell can interpret.
Everything from this, all right.
So here is the indicator for a here document.
As everyone has anyone heard that I'm here to talk.
It's every.
Come on.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Anyone?
All right.
Who is not heard about here document?
OK.
A here document is some sort of indicator
that from this point forward is going
to be a document of sorts, of some sort, you know.
So in our case, we're going to say,
whatever you come to, that indicates the end of this file.
So this from here down, since I don't know PHP,
I'm not putting anything in there.
But this would be PHP script, whatever that is.
And then the shell sees this as, oh, that's the end of the
here document.
Here's my file to plug into PHP to execute.
Does that make sense?
Now, if I had a file, let's say,
interface.php, and that case you would probably give it
to dash f, interface.php.
So you did, what was that?
I'm assuming that dash f means execute this file.
OK.
Now, PHP may do it in another way out.
I think you speak to it.
I can't answer.
But however it is, I mean, you just take the file name
as it's parameter without it.
And share.
So we're going to somewhere that I don't know.
OK.
All of that's what I was.
But that's just one example.
It's the here document.
All right.
So let's say that from the command line, we've said, where
are you taking the OF?
You could call that anything.
Yeah, you could call it, at least over.
At this long end, at the bottom, you end up with the same thing.
It's going to basically encapsulate that information to a point.
Right.
So anything between the OF and the OF or jump and jump now?
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Now, notice that I do not have a space here.
That's important, because if you do have a space there,
and you need to have a space, I think, down here,
I don't remember.
Just take it out.
No more.
Whatever it is.
Yeah.
Now, otherwise, you can do what you were saying.
And what you call that HP bomb interface is different.
All right.
So now that calls your HP program or something like that.
Okay.
So you basically, first of all, you hold it in the back, the shells, and then call HP from
the right.
No HP calls.
We have not.
But I mean, inside the shell.
In an inch.
All right.
So you're still, I've been back.
Yes.
Right.
So it's something in.
So whenever you have the command line or when you click your icon or whatever, it looks
at this, it says, OK, the rest of this is going to be batching.
So let's run it within a batch shell.
The batch looks at it and it comes to here.
And the batch calls HP.
Right.
HP 70 looks at it.
Arguments.
All right.
I'm going to call this.
And I'm going to interpret it.
Right.
It's up there.
Is everybody following?
Am I talking about the batch?
Because I tend to do that sometimes.
Front.
Front.
Which was in the store.
Yeah.
All right.
So let's say you want to have some arguments to, to this script.
Anyone have a certain format?
I'm going to just give it to this because it's beyond my knowledge for PHP.
So.
I'm going to say question example for you.
What was it?
There's some reason.
Okay.
So.
I'm going to make it happen.
All right.
All right.
So.
Now what I'm going to do.
I'm going to give you the one you're passing around.
If you pass white, then it's the last one.
Yeah.
It's the last one.
All right.
So.
Yeah.
So.
I do listen there.
Where do you?
You need to go anywhere.
That's what I understand.
So, there's backup.web.wav.bash.
So, all you got to do is back up, underscore, web.bash.
No, can't do that, right?
And the reason you can't do that is because, first of all,
execute your own directory, which is where I am.
Let me prove that.
I'm currently in home, Schmidt.
Hey, I like it.
So, I'm currently in this directory.
There's some files in there in this directory.
And I bet you that the path does not have this in, well, let's find out.
So, yeah, okay.
So, this is the path.
This is the, everyone know what a path is?
They would not know what a path is.
Let me ask you that.
Anyone not know what path is.
Everybody knows what a path is.
How I've done it.
So, you see that Schmidt is not here.
So, it's not going to execute.
That's one problem.
That's the one reason.
The second thing is that, if you do a long listing of the file,
Mac and I went, you will see.
Did I need to explain this?
Do you know the permissions?
It does not.
You don't know?
I do know.
You do know.
Okay.
Do you explain it?
Well, I know it to the extent R means readable, I think.
Right.
And W means writable.
And that last one is supposed to be executable.
And that's the reason that the script's not working.
Bingo.
So, we need to change it.
I'm going to want it plus X of that.
Okay.
And you're listing and it's green.
But that's just close to this shelf.
So, now I can put this directory,
run back up, dot, underscore web.bash.
And there we go.
Okay.
Do you explain it?
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Too loud.
Okay.
Final run out.
All right.
So, you want to,
Chmod is to change the mode of the file.
These are the mode bits.
I added the executable width so that it becomes executable.
Unix is different from the other operating system.
In that,
it's not determined by the file type,
whether it's executed or not.
It's just determined by this bit,
whether it can be executed.
So, any file can be executable.
Not a good idea for all files.
If, especially if it's just a text file,
you can try to execute it.
It just goes, you know, or something.
All right.
So, now we've got execution rights for execution rights.
For the user, for the green, and all.
All right.
So, now, you see the X that I,
in order to execute from my correct directory,
which is what the thought is,
and the slash, this file.
It executed, and it gave me that.
Now, why did it give me that?
All right.
Does it?
Do I need to go into that?
Sure.
If I don't know what it need to go into,
we can do something else.
This is a newbie session.
So, please, if you don't understand,
you haven't said the echo group.
All right.
So, why didn't you do that?
Oh, my God.
Now, let's take you away.
Let's take away your arguments to the script.
Yes.
So, you see I've got, I'll send $2 and $1 and $0.
I'm just kidding.
That's pound.
I want $2.
All right.
All right.
So, I gave it the A, B, and C.
It is B, A, and then the program.
So, 0 is always going to be the program that's executing.
Then, any arguments after that go 1, 2, 3, 4.
Yes.
Until you get the 9,
and after 9, you're going to have to use
a dash as curly braces around.
And I'll do that.
So, so you can see what I'm talking about.
Unless you don't want me to take you out of this.
You'd like to see the argument.
Let me rerun at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12.
Just for good entry.
All right.
Just.
I'm not used to quarry, so y'all bear with me, I'm a devourer guy, 5, 4, 5, 3, what's that?
I really am typing it.
What did you say?
This is sweet tea, sweet tea, I have to make my head fit fit fit fit fit.
Eric always says to give me a hard time for some reason, it's not, it's not, it's not,
it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not,
it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not,
it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not,
it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not
Now I think they must have changed this, but they used to be, it was confusion whether this is a dollar sign one with a zero after it or if this is a dollar sign 10 so what you need to do in bash is put braces around the name of your variable and then that's the, okay,
that's why I should go with this. So this is the argument variables, I guess you just say.
So other variables, you can just make your own, and then you just put something in it.
Is there a shift? That is like threes in the box. A shift there is. Yes, there is. If I wanted
to, I could just eat my own. Let's give something to you. Am I losing anyone yet?
Long time ago. All right. So, I said that long time ago. So you're really lost.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, they asked me the question that you wanted, that you don't understand.
Well, I mean, I'm not familiar with the scripting. Do you understand, like, the badge, and then you can see that?
Okay. That's expected. What? Have you done any examples of some scripts on there or some simple things?
Probably, I've been done here or something. We can do that. That's kind of complicated.
All right. So have you done any programming at all?
I went for a degree and I got in and out of the script and popped into it.
Okay, but you got a degree from it, right? I got a degree from it.
But you said you've done it to a degree. All right. So, then let me know what's confusing.
Well, I mean, for me, most everything, because I don't get to wrap around programming well at all.
I think, you know, really long time to get mentally to the point of knowing, you know, what you're putting in and out of this.
You know what I said?
No, this is a new recession. So, I'm sure you're not the only one that has this question. So, I'm here for you, man.
You're a little late, too. So, I mean, that's all right.
All right. So, at the very beginning.
I didn't this much good.
At the very beginning, this is a file I'm editing.
And this, I just put the output.
So, whenever it starts out, it's going to be running the bash, which is the ship born again, shell.
Which was named after Mr. Bourne.
Jason Bourne here.
No, no, no. Different words.
In you.
In you.
All right. In most scripting languages, is it time?
You just get bored.
All right.
In most scripting languages, the pound sign means a comment.
So, that's why I got the second line here.
So, it's from the pound sign to the end of the line. That's a comment.
So, it's ignored.
Except for when it's the first line.
And it's a pound and an exclamation point.
That means to the operating system, I'm going to run this file with this program.
Okay. So, this program is going to be run by bash.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, exactly.
Where?
That exclamation point.
That exclamation point.
That exclamation point.
That exclamation point.
That indicates to the operating system that this will execute this.
Okay. So, this is.
Bash is going to be running this script.
Okay.
Now, this is a pound.
So, that means this is a comment from there on.
To the end of the line.
Okay. Okay.
Tell me.
Yes.
What type of program is that?
What type of program is what?
Echo.
In Chrome.
Yeah, it's a built-in.
But built-in.
Two different types.
You'll have one set of built-in.
One set of built-in.
One set of built-in.
One set of built-in.
One set of built-in.
You've got a following statement.
You've got a user voting.
Unless is in your pad.
Unless is in your pad.
Which echo could be?
And if you're running this script,
lock it like this.
Your site would set up that absolute pad.
It's going to level it around.
Actually, can you tell its how they did it to the drill?
With a very long schedule which people are.
Well, now I'm going to really far.
Well, I mean, if you're writing a script, the one thing you want to be aware of is that the shell is there to help you.
Yes.
If you're curious as to how you're going to have to go about it.
That's paying for it.
That's the way it will look.
All right.
That's like 80 plus pages of dot.
And that's not, that's not paying for it.
All right, those?
Well, I don't know.
No, I know.
You can go on a screen at home as opposed to working and up there.
You can see all of those variables that are all those built in commands.
Built in commands are available.
You can spend your scripting.
You can talk to all of those items there.
You don't have to put a path to just simply use it.
And if you have a question about it, there's various documentation that can explain what the various things are.
Some of them are pretty straightforward.
Let me see.
Fc, you can figure out, you know, like WC is like the word counts.
You can figure out how many words are in a bottle.
So I put the word, how many characters are in a bottle?
Okay.
So.
Now, in, in bash, the variables, you know, the variables, right?
Okay, variables start with a dollar sign.
Okay.
In bash.
I'm just born shell, corn shell, t-shell, you know, just for nothing.
I think all shells.
Okay.
No one's disagreeing.
Now, in bash, the, yeah, you were here before you walked in.
In bash, whenever you call program, it's automatically signs these numeric variables.
Zero is the name of the program.
That's right.
So in our case, it's not the name of that.
Yeah.
But it's the name.
So this will print what you've got there now.
And right here, you see, I'm assigning to the variable that I called my own.
And I assign something in it.
Now, in, in, in bash and born shell, you need to not have spaces around it.
This is not C.
Otherwise, it's assuming you want the my own program.
But everything that's in a shell script, you can do all the command line, line by line.
In fact, I usually test my shell scripts by cutting and pasting this into my command line.
And see where it is.
Now, the, you got to finagle some of the variables because you're not going to have the same one through ten or whatever.
And your script may be changing your variables, and that's what I think.
Why don't you have that half of it?
$5 in front of my own when you define it.
When you define it, you do not need it.
And you should not let it in fact.
But whenever you use it after this, when you use it, you, you need it.
Because it's referencing my own.
This is where you're both defining and putting a value to it.
That's what echo means.
Echo means put to the screen.
Why are you presenting echo within all those variables?
Just to show stuff.
When it runs in the program, it's actually going to put variables after it.
And those are going to be referenced by this echo statement.
So it's hers.
See if there's numbers after the word.
Okay.
I think that's basically what he's saying.
The program is echo those numbers.
What's now the first one it is?
Right over one is the first argument.
So it's going to be a second and two and four.
Right.
Do he say is echo $8?
And then you end up being 8.
What's the response to this?
Hey, let's all go.
Hey.
All right.
It's great to hear.
Wow.
Wow.
It signifies that it's a bash grip.
That's just for me.
You can go through it.
It's not needed.
That was just for my purposes.
So that either it does a bash grip here.
The operating system is going to look
from Shabang at the beginning.
The pound exclamation point called Shabang Shabang.
All right.
So what time is it?
Seven.
Seven of seven.
I know why.
Should we continue this later or should is everyone comfortable
with shell scripting now?
Yeah.
We should continue later.
Let me ask is anybody wants to start in shell scripting?
Of various sorts.
There are a lot of good resources out there.
This is not bash, but the one that I did,
I was king of the dummies in the envelope.
Units programming for dummies.
It's a sea shell.
But it teaches you a lot of good methods.
And a lot of good ones with the stuff
is what he's talking about here.
It's very good.
But one resource is tons of resources.
There are two gods that are one is a beginning bash shell scripting,
which somebody received this past week.
And the other one is the advanced bash shell scripting.
I love it, which is very good.
And both of them are open source maintain.
So you can get to all the examples.
Okay, would anyone want to continue this next week?
Next month?
Yes, sure.
Yes, sure.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O.N-T for all of her team.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

129
hpr_transcripts/hpr0053.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
Episode: 53
Title: HPR0053: Codecs Part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0053/hpr0053.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:49:07
---
.
Welcome to the Hacker Public Radio. This is Clack 2. This is the fourth and final episode of the In-depth series on Codex.
There are certain codex that probably a great many of us won't really encounter that often, but some of them are interesting because they kind of, they show how specialized codex can be and how certain codex are working to overcome certain limitations of computers and video.
So I'll go over that a little bit and then toward the end of the episode we'll talk a lot about AUG and I would also like to just touch on just a typical line command of how to encode your video into the AUG format.
And AUG is obviously something that we'll all encounter quite frequently, so that'll split the episode between something you'll probably never see and something you'll see all the time.
So again, these are all kind of obscure codex, but one of the most interesting ones perhaps are the encoding hardware and software packages that certain companies are selling to, for instance, the news programs.
Most news reporters have to get their reports at the scene when they switch over to these people live.
Obviously, since it's happening in reality and being recorded by a video camera, there's a codex involved.
That's what we talked about in the first episode, how a codex is simply translating reality into a digital stream.
So they're taking the video, they're compressing it or encoding it, and then they have to send it across sometimes the world to get that video to play live on television for our consumption.
The way they do this is not by setting up a MacBook next to their, although Apple would love for you to think that.
They're not setting up like just a computer next to the, you know, plugging the camera into it and streaming it.
They're piping it into a rack unit that is dedicated to compressing video at really, really, really fast rates.
And I don't necessarily feel the need to mention a company for this, but just in case someone actually needs, like, has a need for this kind of service or it's just interested in this kind of stuff,
there is one that I know of called Streambox, and they have codex called ACT-L3 and RMS, no relation, I think, to RMS.
I think another one that I think that I've used in a job was by Green Valley, although I could be wrong about that.
Those are dedicated hardware devices that simply encode video, and it's very heavy duty, and it's very serious, and it's not something that a lot of people are going to use often,
but just be aware that that exists, and that's how really, really smooth videos transferred across the globe.
It's serious stuff.
So, there are other companies, and there are just small ones that I really don't even want to mention their name, because I don't want to promote them in any way.
And they just get into the business of codex, and they'll pinpoint a market, for instance, maybe someone wants to pinpoint the streaming market because they know that streaming video is big right now, and so they figure they'll offer a codec, and they'll market that codec as being a specialized codec for streaming, and it's really good with low bandwidth situations.
And all these other claims to fame, and there might be some truth to it, but the bottom line is that the hardware is still the same hardware.
The software, I mean how good can it really be, and it's a really great way for someone to make a quick buck off of a company that's looking for a solution of how to stream video, or whatever the market that they've been pointing is.
There are yet other codex that you will find more similar to the stream box stuff, where they're dedicated hardware.
There are capture cards out there, not so much for Linux, as far as I know.
Dedicated to capturing, for instance, really, really high definition video.
A lot of computers cannot handle that kind of bit rate, even with a good graphics card and a fiber optic link, because there's just not enough power.
So what certain cards will do is take in the high definition, it will re-encode it into something more manageable by the computer.
They can edit the video, and then they can send it back out.
So these are really specialized codex, and they often have strange names, and they're owned by whatever company is making this specialized hardware.
And again, you'll see the name of the codec in VLC player, if you open up a clip, if it's a mysterious clip, you have no idea why it's not playing anywhere else.
Open it up in VLC, whether it plays or not, you'll see the name of the codec right there.
Do a Google search for that codec, bang, you found out at least who owns that codec, and you're one step closer to getting it.
There are also codex that are actually quite specialized containers for like 3D modeling and things like that that will have the support for really interesting aspects of, I guess, video that usually you wouldn't really need like a materials list and a textures map and things like that.
So those are the specialized codex, and then of course there is the great AUG.
AUG is the open source solution, aside from xvid, it's one of the open source solutions for all those evil codex out there.
There is AUG Vorbis, sound only, it can contain metadata, so it's just like mp3 in the sense that it has tags and things like that.
It may even soon be able to contain data like MIDI data and things like that, so it's a pretty cool little format.
There's AUG, which is obviously the video codec. Now AUG, there's a lot of confusion about that.
A lot of people aren't clear on the patent freedom of AUG, the deal is this.
AUG was based on a codec owned by a company called ON2, the codec was called vp3, and vp3 is covered by patents.
But the codec fiora owned by the ziff.org, guys who do the AUG stuff, fiora has an irrevocable license to do whatever they want to do.
Whatever ziff wants to do with fiora, they're allowed to do it. It's irrevocable, it's permanent.
So while vp3 is covered by patents, fiora is licensed by that company.
If ON2 and ziff have a falling out and never talk to one another again, that agreement stands.
So AUG fiora is a perfectly legal and safe codec to use. It is not a problem.
There are many players for AUG fiora. VLC player, Totem, Miro, formerly known as Democracy Player.
So if you're sending out AUG fiora files to friends, which you should, if you're going to send video,
they can't play it in their Windows Media Player or their QuickTime Player.
Tell them to go download either Miro or VLC Player. They can watch it, and that will be that.
And now that KDE is out for both Windows and Mac, you could even send them to go download caffeine.
So AUG fiora is a great little codec. It is in peg 4 compliant.
It supports i and p frames, not b frames, but I haven't had any problems with that.
It supports variable bit rate, so that in a situation where there's a big fancy explosion with lots of lasers,
it will give that section of the video a very high band with a very high bit rate.
And then we cut to me talking at the microphone again, and it'll drop my bit rate down,
because I don't need that much information. So that's a really handy device called variable bit rate
to keep your end file size down by making it a variable in terms of what bit rate each scene gets.
It works within the YUV color space, which is the default for professional grade video.
It does not interlace, but again, that hasn't been really a problem for anyone that I know of.
I mean, interlaced videos kind of being phased out in many ways.
So AUG or the ZIF people also have the FLAC codec, which is the uncompressed audio codec, like WAVE or AIFF.
Speaks is for low bit rate audio. It supports VBR. It's just a very paired down kind of codec that they've designed, just voice stuff.
So that if I wanted to send this out in the Speaks format, that would be great.
It's extremely low bit rate stuff. It would be ideal, I would think, for something like Skype or something like that.
There have been some, I think, video games. I think I heard on an interview with someone from ZIF,
like some prominent video games have actually used the Speaks codec for, I guess, online talking to other players or something like that.
So that's kind of cool. So AUG is a fantastic codec. Nothing to be afraid of. Very handy codec.
And now let's talk a little bit about how we can transcode video that maybe we acquire from someone into a free format like AUG.
Or maybe it's video that we've acquired from a video camera. We want to save it for ourselves, we want to archive it.
Going to AUG is a great idea. Either AUG or XVID. Because you never know what the impact of society is going to do.
You don't know what kind of support they're going to give you. Whereas AUG and XVID, obviously being open source,
not going to be a problem in terms of it suddenly disappearing off the face of the earth.
So to do this, you'll need ffimpeg2theora installed. That is ffimpeg, the number 2 in the word theora,
t-h-e-o-r-a. Easiest way to get that apt-get install ffimpeg, the number 2 t-h-e-o-r-a,
or yum install ffimpeg2theora. Either way, it'll get to your repository and grab that little command line program.
And you can open up a terminal or a console, and you can do the following.
The command obviously is ffimpeg2theora, and then you type in the name of the file. So it'll be example.avi.
Then you need to give it the frame size that you want. So if you're staying native, it's just going to...
So if it was standard definition, it would be dash x, space 720, and then dash y, space 480, or whatever.
You look at the video that you're trying to transcode and see what the native frame size is.
Or if you want to scale it down, then you just do the math, 320 by 240, or whatever size you prefer.
And you'll want to define your bitrate as well. So the option for that is dash capital V.
And that is going to be measured in kilobits per second. Can't really predict what it would be. It just depends on the video.
So it could be anywhere from conceivably 200 kilobits per second all the way up to a lot more.
So just whatever bitrate you think is going to treat the video best and be better for your audience.
You'll need to... or you may want to also define the aspect ratio, because Ogthura does have a lot of different aspect ratios that it can encode to.
So if it was something that you'd recorded in anamorphic mode on your camera, it would be dash dash aspect space 16 colon 9.
Or if it was just standard definition, non-anamorphic, it'd be 4 colon 3, audio bitrate as well.
And remember, the higher the audio bitrate, essentially the lower the video bitrate is going to be if file size is a concern to you.
So typical audio bitrate you figure the audio that you download off of the internet usually is about 128 kilobits per second a lot of times on music.
It's a lot less on most podcasts because most podcasts are people talking and so it's frequently 64 kilobits per second.
So whatever you think the audio in this clip would require is what you would put here.
So dash capital A192 would be pretty good sound, 128 kind of standard sound, anything lower than 128 you're getting into areas where audio people are going to start to cringe.
You can also set how many output channels of audio you have, so that would be just dash C and then you can do one or two.
You can set the keyframe interval, which would be your iFrames.
And that's the default for for for ff impact to the aura is 64.
So that's one really nice frame every two seconds roughly.
So you could make that more frequent if you wanted to. There's the sample rate that you'll want to set for your audio again dash capital H for CD quality.
It's 44 100 DVD quality would be more like 4800 48000.
I usually just leave it at 44 100 not really a reason to go higher than that.
Usually not a good idea to go lower than that.
Dash O is your output. So put dash O and then name a file dot OGG.
The dot OGG is the again the container file. So all the aug when we say aug we're typically talking about aug Vorbis, but we might be talking about aug the aura obviously.
The aug is simply our version of the dot AVI or the dot MP4 or the dot WMV or what have you hit return and it will start encoding your video.
Encoding video relies heavily on the power of your CPU.
Video is being processed by your CPU to being being received and then written back out as a file.
If you have a couple of CPUs dedicated to doing this, it'll be a pretty quick process.
If you have just a single Intel Core Duo 2 chip, it's going to take, you know, I mean if it's a long file, it could take quite a while.
Be aware that encoding video is usually an intense and long process.
Your computer will get pretty hot. You will get pretty bored waiting for it.
So it's a great thing to have running overnight or started up in the morning and go to work, come back, see what happens.
But that's all there is to it really. It's just keeping in mind the variables that we've discussed in episode two, I think, or three, whatever we were talking about.
And then just typing in those variables into the command line one after another with the input file at the very beginning, the output file at the very end.
The manual page for ffnpeg2theora is actually one of the best manual pages that I've ever read.
I find it very clear. It just, it gives you a list of every single flag that you can possibly assign to ffnpeg2theora.
I guess it doesn't really tell you a whole lot about it, but now you know all, you need to know about those variables.
So when you see that there's the keyframe interval or the video bitrate and the audio bitrate and the sample rate, things like that, you now know what all of that is talking about.
Thanks for listening. This has been Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-C for all of those meetings.
Thank you very much.

60
hpr_transcripts/hpr0054.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
Episode: 54
Title: HPR0054: This Old Hack Part 6
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0054/hpr0054.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:49:32
---
Bye!
Extreme Will Pump Hacking!
Just don't break anything.
Get ready for another exciting edition of this old hack.
Well, I'm back at it again.
Fucking around with that old well house of mine.
And I'm really super geeking at tonight.
I'm like last year when I went to work on the well.
It was hot as hell tonight, it's rather chilly.
And it's probably a good 50 degrees cooler than it was when I worked on it in the middle of summer.
But needless to say, this is a good time to go back over and touch on some of the points that I might not have exactly been quite clear about originally.
Talk about a couple other things.
Just getting my stuff set up here.
Tools.
Beer.
Everything I'm going to need.
Got my headlamp on.
Cause I'll talk about the headlamps first.
Now this is the cheapest and probably my opinion the worst type of headlamp you could have because it's first of all it's not an LED headlamp.
It's a single incandescent bulb.
So it's bulkier.
It sits kind of far out.
So it wobbles a whole lot.
Now with the newer a little bit more expensive LED lights.
They're brighter and they don't take as big of batteries and of course they last a whole lot longer than the incandescent bulbs.
And the ones they sell at Walmart are okay but I had this one really nice headlamp one time.
I found it in the woods camping.
And it was made by black diamond.
The thing that was nice about it and I've never seen any of the regular retail stores carry this particular model.
The thing about it that made it nice was the battery pack was in the back of the headband.
Cause the headlamp you know it's an elastic band and it was a light on the front.
Well the black diamond unit the batteries were in the back.
So the weight was evenly distributed and the light panel was really slender and you could fold it down and you could probably conceal it under like a toboggan hat.
You're like a thick winter hat.
It was slim enough to wear. You could probably hide it.
It was very comfortable and you didn't ever have to worry about breaking your head and losing the position of the light.
Somebody found it from me in Northern California.
So right now I'm doing as I'm trying to find some thread tape.
And I didn't ask my wife to pick any up which she would store.
It's kind of funny what happened the other day the power in the kid's room just went out just a kid's room.
Obviously I checked the breakers and that wasn't the problem.
There's just no power.
Well yesterday after the power being off for a couple of days and just mysteriously came back on.
Or like okay everything is good.
Well today while I was at work the power went out again and this time the power through the well went out.
Well my life came out here to just to mess with the well pump switch which I touched on in a previous episode.
Episode five.
And if you tap it with a stick and after it's been turned off it'll cause it to come back on.
And I've had some couple of requests to be more clear about the nature of the well pump pressure switch.
So I'm going to go into that too.
Thank you for listening to HACRA Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all of us here.
Thank you.

187
hpr_transcripts/hpr0055.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,187 @@
Episode: 55
Title: HPR0055: Slax
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0055/hpr0055.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:50:13
---
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
it without any catches. Now if you've done EXT2 or XFS, then you're going to want to do
sudo space dot slash boot slash lilo INST dot SH. And that's really important because
it will not work if you do the wrong one. And they don't make, I didn't notice that
it was a huge, I mean they don't have like a big warning sign in the installer files
or anything. So you need to just kind of be on top of that, know what you're doing.
Now another catch is that whilst installing, it's going to need to run a lilo binary file.
And this lilo binary file will only run on the architecture, the CPU architecture, you
know, that it is a binary four. So I know for sure that it will fail on for instance
the PowerPC chip, it will work fine on an I 386 architecture or 686 architecture, you
know, the typical Intel architecture. I don't have an AMD chip to try this on and I don't
know enough about the differences between AMD and Intel except that typically if you're
downloading an ISO, you have to make sure that you're getting that ISO for either AMD
or Intel. So I'm assuming there could be a problem there. So if you're on an AMD system
and you're trying to install this and it isn't working, if it hangs at lilo, it's because
your chip architecture is wrong. So you'll need to find an Intel machine possibly to install
this on. If you're installing from Windows, which I did not and I do not have access to
a Windows machine to test it on, you can simply, you can be in Windows, there is an installer
dot BAT file. So presumably you will know how to run that on Windows and you run that
and I guess it'll work. Again, I do not have access to that so I haven't tried it but
I have asked about two people on IRC how they installed it after they had done successful
installs and what they had done was just do it via Windows and I guess that probably
circumvents any kind of weird file system issue since I'm sure Windows probably doesn't
recognize the X2 or XFS. So you're probably just dealing with a VFAT. So once you have
it installed and it's ready to go, obviously you need to make sure that your BIOS settings
are correct to be able to boot off of it. Getting into BIOS is usually as simple as hitting
F2, Dring Boot or sometimes it's escape, Dring Boot or Delete Dring Boot and just set it
so that the USB is a bootable, you know, the booting from USB is enabled and preferably
higher in the sequence than your hard drive or else it will just boot off the hard drive
because it won't ever get past the hard drive. But once you have it installed and you booted
up off of it, you can easily make a persistent file, a persistent environment. And in
all actuality, I have anyone have to do this. It's actually just being persistent for me.
I don't know if this is an update that they've made for 6.0. Right now it's being persistent
for me and the way to make it persistent if it is not persistent for you is simply make
a directory on your flash drive. You can call it, for instance, Slack's RC. And then when
you get to the boot up screen, you can use a boot parameter. Changes equals slash Slack's RC.
And then Slack's knows where to put all of your changes and where to find them again
later on. So I'm assuming there's probably a way to modify the LILO config file to make
that boot parameter a constant thing. I haven't really played around with that lately.
But if you go listen to Dan Washco's episode, HPR episode, about specifically obviously
a LILO episode, you will find all the kind of information that you need to make that happen.
The modules that Slack's has is a really cool feature. These are basically Slack packages.
So they're basically just.tgz that you can actually, there's a utility on Slack's to convert
a Slack package to a Slack's module. And there are sites with Slack's modules available.
And you can add these modules to a folder in on your USB drive. You can identify that
as your module folder. And then when you boot up, you will have those programs available
to you. So you can keep adding two slacks and, you know, really easily with these little packages
basically. In some events, you're not going to be able to get to a computer's BIOS in order
to make it bootable from a USB drive. In that case, don't forget that you do have the live CD
option. You could use that. That's what I ended up having to do at work since I worked around
Macs and wanted to boot up off of the thumb drive. And the newest incarnation of Macs
do not use open firmware so you can't access any kind of firmware setting for the boot sequence.
And it simply will not boot off of the USB drive, tried everything. And just doesn't work.
So you could probably hack the EFI firmware by downloading a developer kit from Intel.
And installing it on the Mac. But you'd probably end up breaking the Mac. And I can't really
afford to do that. I'm a job right now. So I haven't done it. But the live CD is an option.
It works really well. I've been using that quite a bit at work. So either way, slacks is highly
enjoyable. It's a great little system. Runs really, really fast probably because it's paired down,
but also probably because it's on followed state. So you're not physically waiting for really
anything. So it's a great little solution for for a quick Linux fix if you're on the go.
And it's a really cool system. So give it a shot. If you've not tried Slackware,
this could be a great introduction to it. It's pretty much, you know, you boot it up and it's
kind of ready to go. It doesn't have any of the classic, you know, scary Slackware kind of things
that you have to configure. So try it out and you might you might like it.
Thank you for listening to Hack the Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by caro.net. So head on over to C-A-R-O.N-P for all of us here.

87
hpr_transcripts/hpr0056.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
Episode: 56
Title: HPR0056: Open Street Map
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0056/hpr0056.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:50:16
---
Up.
Hi and welcome to Acro Public Radio. My name is Ken Fallon and today I'm doing an
episode on a project that I think is really rather cool. I first come across this project
last year at the Linux World Expo in the Netherlands and I commented on deviates to show
about the project and it's called OpenStreepmap.org. Now the idea behind the project is to
do for mapping what Wikipedia has done for the unsightly media and that's to generate
an open database of free maps around the world. Now you might ask yourself why are the
bothering when you've got APIs available for Google Maps and Yahoo and all the other people
who are offering mapping? Well the simple answer is that data is copyrighted and if you
look on Google Earth and the bottom right hand corner you can see who the particular
map data is owned by. Okay so let's talk a little bit about the maps. The process involved
in doing the maps is five step process. The first being collect the data, two is upload
the data, then you create and edit the data, you add labels and add details to it and then
step five is you render the maps. Now if you've got a device with a GPS unit in it you
can help the project by collecting some data and uploading it to the website. It's very
simple, you just go and create yourself an account and as you travel your GPS units will
give you your position along the road which is essentially nothing more than a whole
of points with a latitude, longitude, elevation and probably time. Now at the end of your journey
you should be able to export out your data and upload it to the OpenStreepmap project and
if that's all you want to do with project you're adding information for the mappers to
create their mapping data. Okay let's move on to the next one. That's creating an editing
OpenStreepmap data and the OpenStreepmap has three elements, an old, ways and closed ways
and an old is a point in space at latitude and longitude. So think about it as donating
postbox or a signpost or something like that. A way is a series of nodes ordered in one direction,
a one way street for instance, or a bicycle path or something of that nature and a closed way
is a loop of a way, something like a park, a lake or an island. So if you think of it as a bit
like a vector drawing, an old is a point, a way is a line and a closed way is an area. I'm not
actually going to go into too much detail here on how to edit them up because it's a little bit
outside the scope of what I can do here in an audio podcast but there are two tools that are
available to you. One is a Java application called port latch. She can use to join the dots
essentially and the other is a Java application called Java OpenStreepmap editor and they're both
available on the OpenStreepmap.org site and I advise you to read a little bit more
about both of those before you go creating some maps and then the final process of this is to
render the map. So if you want to get involved with the project, the easiest way to go about that
is probably uploading DSM data. If you're interested into in vector drawing or use of packages
like Inkscape or AutoCAD or something like that then the mapping and tagging features might
be of interest to you. The project itself has met some inroads in getting map data and here in
the Netherlands the map data has been donated. A lot of the map data has been donated at least.
However, even though the map data has been fairly comprehensive in all the streets and towns
there is a project going on to add the cycle paths for the Netherlands in and the cycling is
very popular here so that would be actually quite useful. But if I just look around the neighborhood
here myself I can see that in the time since the survey was done for the roads and streets around
there has been several auditions and changes in the area that would necessitate
somebody going in and modifying these maps and that's the main benefit of the open street map
project that when the data is there should be very easy for people in the locality with local
knowledge to go in and change things. For instance they've blocked off the streets to make it
inaccessible by cars and it's now only accessible by bikes. They've put an audition round about
that moved, they've rebuilt the swim pool and they've moved the recreation area and they've
blocked off certain things and this is all just in within 500 meters of where I'm living at the
moment. So there's definitely a lot of work to do even in areas where there is complete
and airports there are complete mapping data. Just a few weeks ago I was went back home to Ireland
and a lot of the areas in Ireland haven't been mapped at all so it really is an opportunity to go out
and get your hometown and put it on the map so to say, forgive the pun. So actually that's quite
interesting just to see people coming who probably work in towns and cities, drive down the motorways
down the local roads and end up going up some boring somewhere for the weekend to visit the family
to bring the GPS with them and then they upload their data. Now when that data gets uploaded it's
essentially like a transparency that the mapping person would use and you can turn it on and turn
it off in your mapping data and then the actual drawing of the roads is done on a different layer
so that's kind of how that whole thing operates. A few little tips here if you're going to be getting
involved in some mapping is the coordination, if you've got a camera that has a GPS in it,
as you go along you can take photographs of streets, points of interest like street names,
their type of road, if it's a bicycle path, if the road is a bicycle path, if it's one
bicycle path on either side, if it's the bicycle path on the pavement, if it's paved road or whatever.
And it's important to do this ourselves and not pick up information from copyrighted maps because
that kind of defeats the whole purpose. And it's important for us to take that information in and
not be tempted to use actual maps that we've purchased our data from other locations because very
often that information is copyrighted and very often they will have easter eggs stored in the maps
so that they can prove in the court that the map data was taken from their data set.
And some very interesting things on the wiki there describing how fake roads and churches have
been added to make their data set unique. If you are going to be going taking photographs as you
go along and your camera does not have a GPS unit in it, a very simple tip is to take a photograph
of your GPS unit showing clearly the data and time on it. And then later on the JOSM
application, you can drag in the photo and correspond the time on your GPS unit and the time
on your camera so that the offsets are correct so that all subsequent photos which have a time
in the XBIF data are corresponded to a physical time on your GPS plot which corresponds to a
latitude and a longitude. Anyway, I'm going to think you're going to wrap it up there. Thank you
very much for listening to this for the episode and come across something that's interesting
or that tickles your fancy so to speak, grab your microphone, record a little podcast about it and
submit it. Thank you very much for your time and have a nice day.
Thank you for listening to HACCA Public Radio. HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to

143
hpr_transcripts/hpr0057.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
Episode: 57
Title: HPR0057: LPI Certifications Part 3
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0057/hpr0057.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:51:16
---
.
Hello and welcome to Acro Public Radio. My name is Ken Fallant, so they will be continuing
this series on the LPI certification. Today we are going to be talking about hard drives.
The most common hard drive found in the PC today is the Integrated Drive Electronics
or IDE hard drive. They are also known as ATA drives. Other drives in use commonly on
servers are scousy drives and recently most drives being shipped to PCs are now serial
ATA. So the original IDE or ATA drives are now retrofitted with the name of parallel
ATA drives. When you can tell the difference, the parallel has a big ribbon cable, whereas
the serial ATA has a smaller data cable. As far as the LPI certification goes, what you
probably need to know is the limits that are imposed due to the original bias limitations
when dealing with hard disks. You are also going to need to know some stuff on the tools
to look at and tune a hard disk and you probably also going to need to know about the Linux
disk naming conventions. So that is more or less what we are going to cover today. First
of all some background on what a hard disk is and how it works. Hard disk is actually composed
of platters made of other aluminium or glass coated in a magnetic material and the platters
or disks are arranged one on top of each other on a spindle. The whole thing is enclosed
in a enclosure and there is a hard disk controller attached to the underside of the disk. The
read right head is mounted in an arm which moves from the outside edge of the disk to the
center that allows it to access any area on the disk. The disks themselves can spin at
very high speeds often reaching 170 miles per hour or around 270 kilometers per hour. That
is stored on the surface of a platter in sectors and tracks. The tracks are concentric circles
and the sectors are pie-shaped wedges on the track. The term cylinder is used to describe
the same track on all the platters as they are stacked one on top of the other. So if
you have track one on the first platter, you are also talking about track one and second
track one on the third track one on the fourth as you go up. It creates a sort of cylinder.
When the original hard disks came out, the way you would locate a piece of information
on the hard disk was by giving it a reference based on cylinders, heads and sectors of tracks.
So if something was asked position one, cylinder one and head five on track twelve, you would
be able to locate information. Another method for locating data on the disk is called
the logical block address or the LBA address. And rather than using geometry like CHS does,
it simply used number structure to name the sectors regardless of their physical construction.
Okay now what does all of this got to do with the exam? The important part is that every hard disk
is presented to the bias through its geometry, which tells the bias of many cylinder's heads
tracks that the disk uses. This is using the CHS method. For Windows, the boot loader is always
located at the master boot record. However for Linux, the boot loader, LiDOR group can either be
at the master boot record or at the root partition. And if it's at the root partition,
then you have to be aware of certain limits that are imposed by this CHS methodology
employed by the bias. And the most important limit that you need to know about is the
one, oh two four cylinder limited. Now where this comes about is the IDE, ADA specification
had specification for the number of cylinders, heads and sectors. And then you had biases
the bias in 13H standard had also specifications for the number of cylinders, heads and sectors.
Problem is that they didn't talk to each other and we ended up with having to take the smallest
combination of each. So although the IDE specification supports 16 cylinders maximum,
the bias only supports 10. And while the bias supports 8 heads, the IDE specification only
supports 4. And the IDE specification supports 8 sectors max but the bias only supports 6. So what
you end up is having maximum of 10 cylinders which corresponds to one or two four cylinders,
sorry 10 bits for a cylinder number. And that corresponds to one or two four maximum cylinders.
And then the maximum 16 heads with 63 sectors. Like gives a total maximum of 504 megabytes. So if you're
making a boot partition, you should always make it less than 500 megabytes. A lot of people will
say that anything more than 50 megabytes is a waste of time. Okay, there have been various
different ways to get around this problem by doing translations and all the rest will put the
generally most modern hardest supports LBA. Now the LBA just starts at zero for the first sector
and marks its way up. However, there is a limit of 137 gigabytes imposed by the old ADA standard
that only use 28 bits for addressing. That's more or less gone away now and to the use of 32
bits sector numbers. And that increases the limits to two terabytes. Using workarounds and mapping
they were being able to make the CHS method work up to a limit of 8.4 gigabytes. But after that,
you're just supposed to use LBA. So when querying any hard drive over 8.4 gigabytes,
they will always report through geometry as 16, 3, 8, 3, cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 tracks,
regardless of what their actual geometry is. And you should look in the LBA field for their
actual number of sectors. And that's exactly what we're going to do right now.
But first before we hit that, I want to talk a little bit about the hard drive naming convention
under Linux. First of all, you'll be able to see the devices under special directory called
the DEV file system. Those who are all devices are kept. And like the PROC file system,
which we talked about before, it's a pseudo file system, meaning that it doesn't actually exist
in the conventional sense. Following again, the Linux, everything is a file philosophy.
Now in there, the naming convention has typically been for IDE hard disks that they begin with
slash dev slash HD something. And that for scousy disks, they will go in slash dev slash SD something.
Now scousy disks are also considered to be serial 80 disks. So if you want to see what devices
are attached to your computer, you want to check for both HD and SD drives.
Okay, so jump out to a console and type the following command, LS, space,
forward slash DEV, forward slash HD and anastrix. And for me, that returned no such file or directory
and what that does is it asks for a listing of all the files beginning with HD
in the dev directory. I'm going to do the same thing for SD files and I am returned with a list
SDA, SDA1, SDA2 and SDA5. And that means that I have one serial 80a disk attached to my computer.
And the reason I know it's one is that the third letter of that LS, forward slash dev, forward slash
SD asterix returned SDA and there was no SDB. So that means I just have one disk attached to my
computer and that's correct I do. For scousy disks, they're assigned letters. The first disk is
A, the second disk is B, the third disk is C and continues on to the SDA, SDB, SDC.
For ID artists, it works in a particular order. So the master on the first ID interface would be
HDA, the slave on the first ID channel will be HDB, the master on the second ID channel will be
HDC and the slave on the second ID channel will be HDD. Okay, that's the naming system for the
disks themselves. However, each disk can have partitions and on an ID drive you can have up to four
partitions and on a limited number of logical partitions. Those partitions are donated by a number
after the first three letters designating the disk. So on my example from my computer,
we had a SDA1 and SDA2 and then an SDA5. Another physically amounts is one big root partition which
is SDA1 and then there's a swap partition which is actually an extended partition and that's SDA5
and because extended partitions need to be housed somewhere, it's housed under SDA2. That's
probably a little bit complex for now but it'll come in time. Now looking at my file server downstairs,
when I do Alice, I suppose four slash dev, four slash HD star, I get a HDA, HDC,
HDC1, HDC2, HDC3, HDE and HDE1 and HDG and I happen to know that the HDA and the HDG
are CD-ROMs, the HDC and the HDE are, well the HDE1 is part of an LVM volume which we'll talk about
later and the HDC contains the root partition. I also have scusy disks on that and SDA1 is part
of an LVM SDF and SDF1 are part of an LVM as it's SDG1 and just as a side note, an LVM is
logical volume manager and it's a way to take multiple disks, physical disks and put them together as
a logical volume making the addition and expansion of your partitions as they're shown to Linux a
lot easier but that's not something for the exam just right at the moment. Okay a good command
to find out information about your hard disk is called the HDPram command and that's actually
spelled HDPARM. Get slash set hard disk parameters and for now we're only going to be getting hard disk,
I don't want anyone messing about with the hard disk parameters unless you know what you do it
and I give you the description from the man page which I got by typing man space HDPARM
HDPARM provides a command line interface to various hard disk IO controls supported by Linux
serial ATA parallel ATA and SAS subsystems and older IDE driver subsystems some options may not
work correctly with the latest kernel and the most important command out of that is going to be
minus capital I which requests identification info directly from the drive which is displayed in
the new expanded format which with considerably more detail than the older minus low case i flag.
Now if I'm osy over here to my server and I do uh
uh
sudo hdparam minus capital I for slash dev for slash hda I get loads of information back on my cd
ram drive the model number is a ncdvd read writer it's got the firmware it's standards used
at api dash 1 it's de recue it's bloody bloody but that's all very interesting now if I do um
an ls of the slash dev for sd drives and I look at um
and I look at one of the serial ATA drives I'll do s
s hdparam space minus capital I space for slash dev for slash sda I get a lot more information
about the drive it's a max store something rather it's got a serial number firmware
what standards it supports um and here we are the uh max and current cylinders heads and sectors
are down as 16 303 heads as 16 in the sectors as 63 which we uh found out earlier in this podcast
that it was in fact uh dummy information the real information that we're looking for is the
LBA usable addressable sectors which is 2 4 0 1 2 1 7 2 8 which is 122 gigabytes so you can
happily play with that command and see what information is available on your system one good
way to find out what in what our disks are attached to your computer is using they out from
the system log as it boots up and that command well I think we've talked about it before is called
and from the description in the man page d messages used to examine or control current
buffer the program helps user to print out their boot up messages instead of copying messages by
hand the user needs only uh do de message do messages uh however so if we go to the command line
on my server again and I type de message space uh the pipe command which is usually above the
keyboard uh the entry key and a type grep space sd I get a whole list of sd devices that were on
my computer and in there I'll see that I have uh discuss the uh cd rom drive that I had
coming up and the other additional disks and if I did the same thing de message and I pipe that
to grep and I do hd then I see all the different id devices that have come up so I see a max store
80a disk what else your cd rom drive comes up here as a hd device so that's pretty much it for this
episode of acro public radio I want to thank you all for listening if you yourself come across
something cooler interesting consider sitting down for five minutes doing a podcast about it
we'll send it in uh know that we could do with some extra filler episodes thank you very much
have a good day thank you for listening to acro public radio hpr sponsored by caro.net
so head on over to caro.nc for all of the team
you

199
hpr_transcripts/hpr0058.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
Episode: 58
Title: HPR0058: Microcontrollers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0058/hpr0058.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:52:22
---
.
Hi everybody, this is BitViper and I'm here to talk to you today about something a little different than just pure Linux, even though that's a good stuff.
I'm here to talk about something interesting on the hardware side that could really help you out.
For example, if you've ever wanted to hack around with hardware and maybe make an alarm, sorry, clock, alarm clock or talk to an LCD screen or make your own MP3 player or robot or something like that, you really have been limited kind of to with just using a computer to get that done.
That's kind of lame because the computer is expensive, big, power-hungry and all that, so I wanted to be nice.
If there was a cheap version of the computer that you can program, that can do everything you need it to do to make the clock or the BitViper player or whatever project you want to make.
So, it turns out to be such a device and that's called a microcontroller.
So, microcontroller is the best way to explain it is what it is and that's a micro-processor by itself.
Everyone knows a penny or something doesn't do much by itself. You have to give it RAM, you have to give it a hard drive or a floppy disk or something to put off of.
You have to give it a USB chip or something or a network chip or whatever.
You have to keep surrounding it with different components until you get what you need, which is good because that gives you the freedom to actually choose what you want.
And indeed, electrical engineers, when they make little embedded devices like WRT 54G or anything else that uses some sort of computer inside, they generally will use a micro-processor that does exactly what they want, the speed and has the features they need.
And then they'll buy exactly the memory they need, speed and size as well and so forth.
So, you can really dial in exactly what you want your system to do and only pay for what you use.
That's well and good for, you know, if you got the abilities to do that. However, me, I'm actually a mechanical engineer, so I know a little bit of electrical but not a lot.
So, I sure could use all the help I could get. So, that's why microcontrollers are so nice because what a microcontroller is.
It's a chip that has a micro-processor inside, but it also has a lot of the other things that you need to make it a full running system.
Like, you know, flash memory for the program to be stored on. Maybe some e-proms, like a little mini hard drive kind of thing.
Even things like input output pins, which you can use to either sense or control things with, you know, and tons of other things.
So, what's nice is that you can find the microcontrollers all kinds and you can find one that has the speed and the resources and features you need.
And instead of costing as much as a computer or all the other separate components like the electrical engineer would use, it's cost like a couple bucks.
Maybe as much as $10 if you get like a super mega powerful one with tons of pins and RAM and flash and all that.
But generally, you could probably get by with a $2 or $3 model. I use the AT Mega 64 myself. I'll talk about that in a little bit.
So, let's run microcontrollers. It's got everything built in. So, you have to buy the different parts and figure out how to wire it before you get started in the program. It's already ready to go.
So, there's two, there's all kinds of companies that make microcontrollers, you know, Hitachi, Megzome, Siemens Megzome. It's unique, have a cool.
However, those are generally more specialized. They have a specific purpose to exist. Maybe they're using cars or maybe they're used in other, you know, environments where they have some features that you generally want to need.
So, there are two companies though that make more of a generic catch all process or microcontroller.
First is microchip, the company. They make the pick processor, which has been around a long time. It's got a lot of support and a lot of community following around it.
And the other one is sort of newer. And that's the AVR chipset. And it's made by a company called Atmel, which you might have heard of. They make a lot of flash memory in other products.
So, kind of made sense for them to start one up. Actually, they bought that design for somebody else. But anyway, that's they make the AVR series of microchips.
Now, there's a big debate. If you go Google and look up like AVR versus pick or something like that, you'll see all kinds of lively debates by people, you know, saying, you know, that's better, no mind's better, mind's cheaper, mind's got more feet, whatever.
And I don't really have the data to tell you which one is better. I do have some small things I know about that kind of suggest AVR might be a little better, but you know, who knows.
I can't really tell you for sure what's better. The only reason I use the AVR series is because a friend of mine happened to have an AVR development kit, which allowed me to program a chip and actually test it right on the developing board.
And so that's why I got started with it turns out that AVR series has some other features on later that I'm so glad I started with it, but you know, I'm sure pick does just fine.
You might have a friend that knows how to pick processors and probably would make sense to learn those as well.
So anyway, I'm not going to say either one's better, but I am going to talk more about the annual version of AVR series, because that's all I know.
So if you want to get started with any of this, it's actually with the so no more pick talk. I'm just going to talk about AVRs.
If you want to get started with this, you don't have to buy anything actually. You can go to at mel.com. I'm going to step through it right now.
And I'll probably put a link up. I remember if you want to add mel.com at the top, you can click on products.
And then in the upper left, you see microcontrollers, a bit risk. Click on that.
And then you're in the 8-bit microcontroller section, and you can look at devices. You can look at the instruction set, the different commands it understands.
You can click on devices, and you can see all the different kinds of chips in this family.
And I'll back up a minute because what's an 8-bit chip? What's a 32-bit chip? That was an option as well. You know, what's all the difference here.
The difference is an 8-bit chip works with variables that are 8-bit large or a byte.
So it can only add two 8-bit numbers together because it's registers inside. This are used to do addition, subtraction, and all the other commands.
So that means you can only go 8-bits, and you can go from 0 to 255 decibel with 8-bits.
So that kind of is lame because if you write a program, you need to go past 255 with a variable, what do you do?
Well, what you end up doing actually is you use more than one register to store the variable.
If you want to make a 16-bit number, which you can go up to, was a... I forgot. I think it's like 65,000 or something.
Let's say two to the 16... Yeah, 65,000. So that's a decently big number. If you want to make a 32-bit number and it goes up to 4-billion, you can.
The way you do it is you break it up. Let's talk about a 16-bit number for a second.
What you do is you take the first 8-bits from the left. That's the most significant bits because it's a larger number on the left side. It's more significant.
You put that in one register and then you take the right most 8-bits and put that in another register.
And so say you want to increment that variable when you increment the lower, the least significant register.
But then you have to test to see if there was an overflow. If it was all at 1-1-1-1-1, once, then you increment it and it goes overflows to 0-0-0-0-0.
So you need to look for that. You need to actually see after you increment the first part if there wasn't overflow.
If so, then you need to increment the other number, the other register, the most significant one.
So that's, and then you can take that all the way up to 32-bit, 64-bit.
But what's interesting about that is that it takes more instructions to work with a 32-bit number, as an example, or a 16-bit number.
Because instead of just incrementing the number, you'd have to increment the lower byte, then check that for overflow and then do an if statement.
And if there wasn't overflow, then do another command, which is to increment the upper register. So it takes a few different instructions.
That contrast with a 32-bit register, where you can have all the entire 32-bit number in one register and you can increment it, you can, you know, subtracting all that.
You don't have to worry about overflow, except if you get to 4 billion or whatever 32-bit gives you.
So that's the difference between a 32-bit and 8-bit generally. I imagine it's more, but it's the basic difference.
So why do people use 8-bit processors, though, if you have this problem going to 255 in all these workarounds?
Well, it turns out that there's a nice shortcut that we'll get to that in a second.
But if you're going to do it all in assembly, then you have to do it manually.
You have to, you know, increment one, do a check, and all that stuff.
And so you got to make sure that you're using it correctly.
Make sure you don't have overflows without knowing about it.
Okay, so that's what a 32-bit first 8-bit processor is. I'm not sure what other things they do, but that's the thing I know.
Okay, so, anyway, if you wanted to play around with, you know, playing with these things, you can actually go to appnell.com, like I said, and go to products, 8-bit, or risk chips.
And then you can go to tools and software, which is about halfway down the gray menu.
And then you've got a whole bunch of things you can download.
And at the top, you can see development kit.
Development kit has a link. You can click on that, and it takes you down to the, where did it go?
You might have to go a little bit. AVR Studio.
So AVR Studio is the program you use in Windows.
There are options for Linux, but AVR Studio works.
I think it works in wine as well. The older version did for sure.
3.5 something.
Anyway, so AVR Studio, what that does is it gives you an IDE development environment, where you have, you know, where you can write your program in assembly.
And then you can actually step through it line by line and watch it run.
And you can see the very, the registers of the macro controller, you can see what's happening to the line by line.
So it's really neat to download an assembly program and just step through it with this tool.
It's familiar quite a bit. And then you can start tweaking it and playing and making your own thing.
And you can also look at the pins. If you have input output pins, which most of the chips do, you can control.
You can say whether or not the pin is an input or an output.
And it's an input, you can actually read it. It's a certain kind of register, and you can look to see if it's 1 or 0.
And that means that there's 5 volts or not, or 0 volts.
And then you could do something based on that.
Because it's an output, you can actually push a value to it 1 or 0.
If it's 1 and it's high, that means it's 5 volts, it's 0 and it's low, of course.
So you can control the pins and you can look at their status in this environment, maybe our studio environment as well.
So really useful, ton of fun. And it's completely free.
So I know just aside for the pick processor, I believe they have an assembler as well.
It does pretty much the same thing.
Anyway, assembler is good to start with with these microcontrollers, because you're right at the hardware level.
You generally, in the beginning of a program, you write to some specific registers to say how you want the processor to behave.
For example, you can say whether or not you want to use interops, or if you're going to use a counter.
If you're going to use a counter, how you want the counter to behave, all these kind of initialization kind of things.
And you can see examples of that.
Just for fun, I'll tell you about what a counter is in case you don't know.
Generally, if you have a program and it's doing its thing, it's going through some infinite loop, because you don't want it to stop.
If you want it to keep going forever, you might want to interrupt it at certain times.
Perhaps like if you make a clock, like I did, you might want to interrupt every second and have it force it to go to the increment second function.
So you can increment seconds to keep things accurate for the time accurate.
So you can make a counter that counts up.
And then when as soon as it gets to a certain number, or if it overflows or something, it can actually make an interrupt, which forces a procedure and interrupt procedure to be started.
And so it's neat, because you can actually have the counter count clock cycles.
And if you know how fast the clock is, say it's an eight megahertz clock, eight million ticks per second, then you can have a counter that does accounts to eight million.
And then we'll tell you when it gets there, and then it'll generate the interrupt.
So that's an example of what a counter is.
You can also have interrupts like on the input output pins.
So if a pin goes high, it generates interrupts, or you can just simply pull it, meaning you're looking at the pin intentionally.
Say, hey, is this pin higher low yet? I don't want it to interrupt me. I just want to check it right now.
So there's tons of different little features. So it's neat, because the counter is like a separate thing running at the same time as your program.
So it's like a little parallel circuit is kind of neat.
And you know, there's other things. There's one other thing I want to talk about is the stack in its memory.
All these chips have flat or regular memory like SRAM, very fast.
You know, it goes away when you turn it off, but it's very useful, very fast when it's running.
And the end, so it has only so much memory, and you know, you work from the top down, you put variables into memory.
If you're not, you know, you don't always have to put variables in the register as you can push them onto the memory.
But you can also, if you want to be able to do functions, so in other words, you want to call a function and then be able to have the function return you back to where you called it from, like a, like any language does, they need to activate what's called a stack.
And what that means is it uses the bottom of the SRAM memory to keep pointers of where the instruction, instruction pointer is pointing at before it goes off to the function that you ask it to go to.
So when the function's done, it tells it to go to the stack to find the pointer that it's stored before it went to the function so it can put that into the instruction pointer.
It gets it back to where you were.
So it saves its locations, what the stacks for. So that's neat for functions from returning from functions and that's how that works.
So it's all an assembly.
You can do any of these things and I really recommend it because you learn about all the initialization things and you understand how what abilities it has and very useful.
But eventually you're going to get tired of assembly because anyone who's ever programmed it knows that it's very action, it's actually very easy like an instruction could be a simple as put this number in register one, put this number in register two.
And then then do an add instruction where it adds R1 and R2 and it puts the result in say R1 whatever.
You know, this is really easy stuff.
So it's generally not that hard to learn. The real challenge is to understand how to take these very basic elementary steps and combine them to do some actual useful stuff.
So, you know, with an assembly, it's kind of hard if you do really complicated if statements, lots of orders and it just gets kind of paid but to change things.
It's fast because you're controlling the hardware directly and you can you can make sure it doesn't do anything extra.
You don't want it to do. But again, it's, I mean, it runs fast, but it's slow to program.
Of course, we have these high-level languages like C and it turns out that you can actually get a C compiler for the AVR for both families actually.
You can buy a basic compiler, I believe, called BASCO. I'd ever used it for the AVR and you can buy a C compiler, I forget from where for some of my money.
But I'm not sure why you do that because it's actually a free C compiler for the AVR chips.
And this is why I'm really glad I stayed or I started with AVR. I'm still using it because when I learned about it, I just couldn't believe it.
Because some of these compilers could cost like a thousand bucks or like $500 per year or things like that.
So they get really expensive because it saves you a lot of time. It takes a lot of work to make a compiler.
But anyway, the free compiler for the AVR you can find at, sorry, win AVR as kind of like window AVR, winavr.sourceforge.net.
And you can download it there. And what that is is they've actually taken the GCC, the compiler for, you know, using Linux.
And they've made a library, a libc library for the AVR series that understands the instructions that are available and can move around it.
And you can actually compile C right there for free. And it works great. It's not hard to use it all.
There's a couple demo programs to get started when you download it. And it does, how do you run GCC on Windows?
Well, it's kind of uses SIGWIN, which allows you to do Linux stuff. So they've packaged SIGWIN and it together in a way that allows you to, you actually don't see it propped.
It just does it in the background after you take your program and say compile. It just calls it and tells you if there's an error or not.
If there's not, you get a assembly program that can be burned or actually it's not the term a compiled object or just a file that you can copy onto the chip and run.
So very cool. It saved me a lot of time. One example was I was making a machine that required or I was making a coiling machine and had to have an LCD screen so you can read what stage it was at on the coiler.
And so I wanted to actually communicate with the LCD screen. It's just four lines of text. You know, it's a very basic thing like you see on a alarm system or something like that.
However, it's pain. Yes, because you have to know how it works with the instructions are to control the LCD screen and so forth.
It turns out that, you know, they're all kind of standard. So someone just decided to write a library for it. You include that.
And then you can just simply say put S, parentheses and quotes and hello. And that's it. That's like the entire thing right there. And you hook up the LCD to the right pins.
And you define the pins and header file of which which venture using and it works. It was amazing. I actually set aside a couple of weeks to learn how to do it until I found out about that library. And of course, just all these other libraries, like serial port libraries to make everything easy to do.
And that's with beauty, beautiful, beautiful thing about C on a VR is they have all these libraries and it's just gorgeous. So props to these guys. They did a great job. Of course, you can run this stuff in Linux as well.
You just don't use a single part. You can now use a tool chain that's made for Linux to pile for cross compile for the record drawer, the VR series.
So I just really couldn't believe how easy it was to use how amazing and free. So again, still haven't paid for any except a couple of devices, which cost me about three bucks or each or so.
Oh, and a development board. And you can get the development board from now. If you go back to where was it tools, I guess. And development kit.
And you'll see one of the options around there is STK 500. And that's you click on that link. You'll and I'll try to put all these links in the show notes. If I remember, I'm kind of sick. So I might not do it tonight.
But this is the night before the show. I left it to the last minute. But you can actually get this little development board that has all these different socket sizes for all the different size AVR chips. You can program all these different kinds of chips.
And I even have some lights and some headers to help you connect directly from the chip to some stuff you're playing with big testing. So you can do it. You can just keep the chip in the development board and run the program right on the development board.
And play with it that way until you're ready to make your own circuit board.
Okay, so anyway, I thought I'd give away one of my programs. I actually way back when it was like 12, 13 years old. I went to San Francisco, I was born raised in Oakland.
Went to San Francisco and went to the nature company. There is a little store and they had this sweet clock. It's called the alien clock. And it basically tells time patterns of light. And so I loved it. I was like, this is so cool. But it was $100.
And by the way, you can actually now I didn't notice the time when you go to alien clock.com. Well, I don't know what the site went live. But you can see what I'm talking about is patterns of light. It's not like a binary clock. I've seen those around. I don't like those because it takes too long to read.
But they think the alien clock has patterns of light. So it's actually easier to read. I can read it in a second or so.
So I didn't have access to that at the time. Oh, so I saved up my money, $100. That'll load a few long. Went back there and they were discontinued. So I didn't have any place to buy it from. It was really fun.
So I've always had that in the back of my head. I really want to clap. It looks like that. Well, finally, when I heard about these these microcontrollers, I was saying, well, that was my chance.
I can make a circuit board with that LEDs on it. And then make a little bracket to mount it in so it stands up on your desk. And because I didn't have this clock in front of me, I made my own pattern of light, my own configuration. And it turns out actually it's a little more efficient than what the professional one you can actually reach fewer lights to get the time.
Anyway, so I'll release the circuit board spec as well as the source code, the schematics for it. So you can see what lines up what it's very, very basic. By the way, I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm not an electrical guy. I know very little bit, very little about electronics.
So I know how to turn a light on with a light with an input output pin using a transistor. There's very basic circuits to do that or control motor with a relay things like that.
Really not much to learn after that. So there's a couple schematics. You can find how to control stuff with my controllers. And there's very well known methods to do so.
Let's just go dig them up and use them and you don't have to be a professional engineer.
Okay, so finally, let's talk about some links. Again, we talked about at mel.com. That's where you can download the assembler that allows you to step through it.
And then you can go to other areas to download. If you go to data sheets on the ABR 8-bit part, you can download all the instructions and learn all the different instructions you can run on these chips. Some of them have more instructions than other, but in general, they're pretty much the same across the entire families. You don't have to relearn it for different chips, which is nice.
Finally, win avr.sourceforge.net. One other thing, not only can you compile and see with that win avr, but you can also run gdb, the debugger, which is useful if you want to, if your program's not doing what you want, and you want to step through it, look at variables change one by one and add breakpoints and all these other things, you can run your program in the debugger.
And so that's very powerful to use your nice tools to check things, figure out what's wrong.
Website I go to a lot is avrfreaks.com. Unfortunately, it's pretty graphic, heavy, it takes a while to load even on a cable motor, but you know, there's a form where you can ask questions.
There's a subform for regular avr discussion 8-bit, as well as gcc avr. So you have to see compiler questions, you can look them up there and do a search first.
And let's see. I think that's pretty much all I got to say on it, again, very cheap hobby to get into.
I don't have to be professional, electrical stuff, very useful, made a lot of things, I've made a lot of sheets, robots to produce things for a company at work for.
You don't have to be a genius to do it. It's all inside the microchore.
And using C, compiler C is just very helpful. All right, so I hope that was interesting and maybe a few people take a look at that. And again, I'm pretty sick tonight.
I don't know if I'll get around to actually do the links and the source could have all that tonight, but I probably will put it up tomorrow, the 20th of March, midday or something like that. So please check back and you should see everything I promised you here.
Anyway, so that's another hacker public radio show.
Thank you for listening to hacker public radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to CARO.ENC for all of us here.
You
You

87
hpr_transcripts/hpr0059.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
Episode: 59
Title: HPR0059: Interview with scorche
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0059/hpr0059.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:52:01
---
Music
Packer Public Radio. This is Clat 2. I'm sitting around looking through some files on my
big super computer here that runs Linux. And I'm just sort of scanning through some
old stuff that I've got. And there's a file here that I used to, that I meant to use
for a podcast that I do. And I just never find a place for it. And I think it's a really
great little interview. And it should be heard. And so it's going to be heard on Hacker
Public Radio right now. It is with a guy named Scorch or Scorchie or Scorshe. He's with
the Rockbox project. And he's one of those programmers that you read about. I mean this guy
knows this stuff. And he's hacking away actively on the Rockbox project. So give this interview
a listen. I was speaking with him myself on IRC and he told me to mention something. And I,
for the life of me, do not remember what it was. It was something about companies that have
contacted Rockbox. Something like that. I don't remember. So if you have any questions about
the interview, you can either ask me on IRC or you can go over to Rockbox and talk to Scorch
or Scorchie or Scorshe, the man himself. He hangs out there a lot. He's very helpful. I was
talking to Austin, aka Scorchie, of the Rockbox project. And Rockbox, of course, is, well, what is
Rockbox? It's an open source firmware for audio players like iRiver's, iAudios, iPods, gigabit,
that sort of thing. So people quite like it a lot. I mean, especially with iPods where you don't
have to deal with iTunes, we enable a whole bunch more features such as, I mean, a five-band
paramedic equalizer, a whole bunch of games, massive codex support, especially compared anything
else without there for a digital audio player. So is anyone actually shipping with Rockbox?
No, however, there have been a few companies that have been sort of talking. There was one
portable electronics. I mean, they really were quite small. I don't even, I had actually never heard
of them before that. But they kind of disappeared from the face of the earth.
Let's think. Sansa actually approached us as saying, you know, we would like you to write this
firmware for us. And that, I mean, they gave us a few devices. They gave us a prototype with a
JTAG port on it. But beyond that, I mean, that was pretty much it. Actually, regarding companies,
there was one that, or there is one, I should say, that has been really kind to us, Austrian
microsystems. They make the DAC for the Sansa devices. Basically, we needed their help
for, see, quite a few months, we actually were running on the Sansa devices without sound,
because we needed, you know, some data sheets in regards to that. We actually approached them.
They offered to give us, you know, a tour of their facilities. And we actually did sign an
NDA to get data sheets that device. Recently, Sansa has upgraded their line to V2s. And they're
actually using an Austrian microsystem system on a chip as well. So a port actually hasn't
been done to that, because no one has actually made the effort quite yet. But I'm sure a port
would probably be incoming, although who knows when. I mean, like I said, it's up to individual
people to take it up. So, but Rockbox strikes me as just being like phenomenally, I don't know,
intuitive and logical in terms of the interface that you use with your portable media player.
And I haven't actually used that many different portable media players. The ones that I have used
essentially have all really, really been terrible in how you interface with it. Is Rockbox not
being adopted because maybe it's too open or something? Well, part of the difficulties is, of course,
DRM. You can't have DRM in an open source world, of course, because then the DRM's algorithms and
everything would be out in the open. Again, back to the intuitiveness. That's really our main
gripe. I mean, the project started on our coast devices sometime around December 2001-ish,
and just the firmware's horrible. And as opposed to a computer, these are embedded systems that you
really don't have a choice about what's running on here. You can't change anything and with Rockbox,
so I mean, that really drives a lot of people to say, hey, you know what? This is our really
our only option for media players, and there really isn't anything worth getting anything
besides something that will run Rockbox. And what is Rockbox on a technical level? Is it using
a Linux kernel or something, or is it just completely different? Actually, no, we did write the
kernel from scratch, which is nice considering we don't have all the cruft of a full Linux kernel,
or even UC Linux or anything like that. So it's optimized. It's mainly in C with some assembly,
of course, for optimization purposes. Wow. And you guys have done a lot of different devices.
How many of you are there? There's probably around 60-ish developers. I don't really like to give
numbers to Core, but I would say probably around 20 to 30, although, you know, I may be way off on
that. Right. Okay. But it is quite an active developer base. So, I mean, you'll see, we probably do,
I mean, we're ranging where we're between two to 20 commits a day, so. Right. Okay. And you have
nightly builds of, well, you have nightly builds, I guess is the thing. We do have nightly builds,
however, typically when we talk to people, we say, you know, you're better off just using the
Bleem builds, who's really, I mean, they are no more stable than the daily's. So. Okay. It is
relatively stable. Right. Yeah. I mean, I installed the open source. Right. No warranties come
expressly implied. Yeah. So I think I installed the nightly build, and I actually did a walk through
on installing Rockbox on this podcast, and you were mentioning to me that maybe the Rockbox manual
might be a better way for people to install this. Yeah. I mean, the main reason for that is, you know,
sometimes install methods can change, as well as people, I'm not saying you did, but, you know,
a lot of people have gotten things wrong, and then, of course, people listen to these podcasts,
or read these things, and do something wrongly, and then come to us and say, why is this working?
So if anyone listens to my podcast and does the Rockbox install from that, yell at me, not at
the IRC channels that you guys are in. I mean, I wouldn't say yell at him. I mean, he's great for
talking about Rockbox. I'm just saying a lot of times, you know, just consult the manual. Yeah,
and I have to say that manual, the official manual is like really well written, and that's just how I,
that's exactly, it got me through the installation pretty easily. So yeah, I was. I hope so. Yeah, yeah.
It's a great product. Thanks for talking, and I encourage everyone to check it out. Where can they
find it? They can find it at www.rockbox.org. If you have more, if you will have more questions about
it, or wonder more precisely exactly what it does, there is a link on the front page to, I think it
says something like what is Rockbox, which is a link to the Y Rockbox Wiki page. That'll detail
some more of our features, that sort of thing. Also on the front page is a list of all the targets
that we support, and keep in mind you're always free to come on Pass Rockbox on our free notes.
Cool. All right. Thanks a lot, Austin. All right.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio. HPR is sponsored by tarot.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-C for all of those of you.

129
hpr_transcripts/hpr0060.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
Episode: 60
Title: HPR0060: Claws Email client
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0060/hpr0060.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:52:33
---
.
.
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I am Deep Geek and I will be your host for this episode.
This episode is a first for Hacker Public Radio
as it is a sort of a new in-depth series on lightweight applications.
But what makes this one a first is that it is going to be the first in-depth series
which is open to all contributors to Hacker Public Radio.
If you want your episode to be part of this series,
just tell our administration when you submit your show.
Why did I make the effort to find out we could do this with our software?
Well, one of the things that fascinates me is the question,
how can we make our box and go even faster?
One solution is lightweight applications.
Just like the risk architecture of computers goes faster
because the processors do less so to can we choose our applications
so that we use smaller, less functional apps that load faster
and do their thing faster.
What will make this series so interesting and what I hope happens
is when others who like their box and to just be more zippy
use this series to create a dialogue.
It should become an interesting spin-in out already great practice
of giving software reviews.
So, lightweight applications.
First off, it is a relative term.
When I was on Windows and went from Internet Explorer to Opera,
I was going to a lightweight alternative.
Now that I am a Linux guy and I have a billion web browsers to choose from,
I keep picking smaller and faster ones.
Also, my favorite Linux, Debian, handles dependency packages
in a very narrow way.
So, if I leave Conqueror, which is KDE's web browser,
because it depends on some Damon process that takes time to start
and go to Firefox, it is a move to a more lightweight application.
If I go from Firefox to Dillow, I can do this again.
It's creating quite an odd effect for me.
I find all the people around me talking about how much time the suspend feature
and their computer saves them in boot time.
And I just get confused because I just re-did my system again
and I now boot in about 30 seconds.
Of course, my tastes run a little spartan.
And I don't expect all around me to adopt my extreme practice.
But I would just love to hear of people doing similar things on their boxes.
But I don't come here tonight to review web browsers.
Tonight, it is email.
Namely, the Silfeet clause email client.
So, my first Linux email was K-mail.
Because I never liked GNOME.
I went there first.
And it was great, rich, full-featured client.
But it took forever to kick off.
I felt like clicking on the K-mail icon took as long as turning on my system.
The reason for this was that it has heavy dependencies within the KDE environment.
So, I began researching email.
I'm not sure if it was on Wikipedia that I read it.
But I heard of this old odd email client called Silfeet
that was stored in Japan by a group of computer people
who did not appreciate HTMLized or as it is sometimes called enhanced email.
So, I decided to try this.
Turns out it was a great little client.
It was a lot like using the old forte agent newsreader
and email software in its layout and way of handling things.
So, I immediately fell for it.
But it was not agent.
It was all about email.
And as I got into it more, I found that it had some other great features that appeal to me.
For one thing, it stores email in the Unish mail-der format.
Well, K-mail uses mail-dears, which mail-dears.
It's a shortening of the word mail and directories, mail-der.
It was more of a KDE interpretation of mail-dears
with their own special weird indexing of messages.
Silfeet clause does put a few ad files in its mail-dears
but you can also have the Unish program Prokmail
directly add messages into its directories
and it will handle it fine.
I immediately wrote a white listing script for Prokmail.
Now, when mail comes in, if Prokmail recognizes the from address,
it puts the mail in my regular queue,
which my window manages taskbar recognizes
and I get a beep in an icon by the clock in my system tray.
If it is unrecognized, it goes into a cell fuller called Suspect
that I check much, much later.
You may be able to dream of some cooler applications yourself.
Also, in the basics of this program are, of course,
an address book and a bunch of effective export and import functions,
along with other things nobody would want to be without,
like SSL support for email.
But please don't think that this program is just this little basic email program
with very few dependencies, because it isn't.
It has plugins, so you can extend it to do just the functions you want.
My first plugin was the themes plugin.
There is nothing better for me than a little zippy application that looks great.
Then I used the newsreader plugin.
I didn't stay the course with that one, as it was not as well suited for binaries
as it was for text-based news groups.
The RSS feed aggregator is a favorite.
I particularly like to get the doc-dropper articles as they are published
right there with my emails.
There are tons of other plugins too.
To see them all, check out the clause-mail.org webpage.
Here's a quick list of some of the highlights.
HTML viewers for both Dillo and GTK HTML2, PDF viewers.
Attachment detachers, Bayesian filtering, a pearl extension,
so you can write your own filters in pearl.
Synchronization would window CE devices,
and an Outlook Evolution V Calendar plugin.
So check it out.
Perhaps you too will like it.
Feedback is always welcome.
You can email me at HPR at deepgeek.us.
Today's GeekTidbit.
Let's have a Geek Hiku from Jim Griffith.
No keyboard present.
Hit F1 to continue.
Then engineering?
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Thank you for listening to Hackers of the Gradio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of her students.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.

266
hpr_transcripts/hpr0061.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,266 @@
Episode: 61
Title: HPR0061: Punk Computing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0061/hpr0061.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:53:32
---
All right, let's chill it up
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Clat 2. I'm going to be your host for this episode.
I wanted to talk a little bit about punks, anarchists, and computers.
This is probably not going to be so much for the experienced Linux user as it is more for the punk and anarchist
or someone who might lean toward that direction who is not familiar with Linux.
This is not going to be an introduction to Linux, however.
If you are a punk or an anarchist or you lean in that direction,
you might have traditionally, if it were maybe 10 years ago,
simply have escued computers entirely as part of the protest against, you know,
whatever current society you're protesting.
But now computers are pretty much everywhere, and they can actually help the punk cause
the anarchist cause in the community quite a bit, just the way that they help every other community,
you know, good communication, sort of coordinating the community together,
being able to access one another, whether you're in a really small town in Idaho
or whether you're in this huge, you know, Mexico city or Madrid.
So computers are obviously important.
Everyone's really going to be able to get a lot of benefit from them,
and a lot of people are using computers running the typical windows,
possibly the slightly less common OS 10,
and a punk or anarchist kind of just using computers simply to talk to people
across the world might be surprised to find out that the operating system,
the environment of the actual computer that they're using,
is part of a huge syndicate, a big racket basically in itself.
And I know to a lot of people it seems like windows just kind of comes with the computer.
You buy the computer or you get the computer from, you know, you inherit it from someone,
but actually the system that you're using is a product,
and it's a source of quite a lot of money, and it's got a huge,
it's basically at the epicenter of a huge global economy.
You can interpret that anyway you want, but if you're not supporting it,
then you probably shouldn't be using it.
And for a lot of time, you know, you kind of use it because you don't really realize
that there's anything else out there, but actually there is something else out there
that doesn't belong to anyone, and offers complete freedom,
complete freedom from corporations,
complete freedom from relying on anyone else really to support you,
to get back to your data, should you need to recall your data in two years,
have the formats changed, things like that.
So this other solution obviously is Linux,
and Linux is something that's easy to get into,
and there's a lot of great podcasts on that very subject,
and there's a lot of great stuff online about it,
so I'm not going to go too deep into it right now.
It's more of an, I guess, an economic argument that I have in terms of why you need to use Linux,
rather than, for instance, stealing Windows or OS10.
In the software world, it's practically legal, although it's not,
but I mean, it's very well known that if you need a software package,
there are places that you can find them, you know,
you go to the wares of sites and you download,
or you download LymeWire and start downloading whatever you need,
and any punk or anarchist going to think that there's nothing wrong with that,
and in fact that it's helping, that it hurts, for instance, Windows or Mac,
or whoever you're getting the wares from,
so that you don't have to buy that product from that company,
you kind of in your mind, you think, well, at least I'm not paying for it,
I'm stealing it, and in that way, I'm hurting the corporation,
but in fact, of course you're not, and in order to understand why you're not,
I mean, traditionally, if you go steal something from a big corporation,
yes, they have to account for that loss,
the money that they've lost from that sale,
they have to kind of drum up somehow,
with intellectual property and intangible goods,
obviously, it doesn't quite work the same way.
If everyone's stealing a product, you might think, well, surely,
if no one's buying this, it's going to hurt the company eventually,
but in fact, people using it is supporting the company.
Let's imagine that I wanted to get you into a prison.
Now, if I don't have the means, if I don't have the power,
or the authority to come to your house,
put you in handcuffs and drag you away forcibly and throw you in prison,
what would be a good way for me to get you into a prison?
You know what I would do is I would make this prison, I would build it,
and I would put this really nice looking front on it.
I would make it look really, really pretty.
I would also possibly charge people to get in.
I would like to make it basically a club, you know,
and you can't get into the prison,
but it's really, really cool to be in that prison.
And in order to get to the prison, you have to know somebody,
or you have to pay somebody.
I would even put a guard out in front of that prison,
so that people couldn't get in, even if they want to.
Okay, so any good punk or anarchist,
you're just going to follow the logic,
or it's a knee jerk reaction, you're going to think,
well, if they're not going to let me in,
I'm going to get in anyway, and so you're going to sneak in.
So maybe you'll find a back door, window,
or you'll crawl over the wall, or whatever,
and you get in, and you think in your mind
that you've just gotten around like this evil corporation,
and you've screwed them over, and you've gotten into the prison for free.
But what you didn't realize is that that building was a prison,
and now you're inside, and they're not going to let you out.
And that's the way that the computer industry,
the proprietary computer industry, functions.
You might have stolen the operating system.
You might have Windows XP that, you know,
and you're circumventing whatever kind of verification,
you know, kind of a check-in, and what do they call it,
genuine advantage, or whatever.
You know, you might have circumvented all of that stuff,
but you're still using their product.
And eventually, at some point, that product is going to,
the fact that you're using that product,
is it's tying you to that company.
And this doesn't matter whether it's Windows, or OS10.
Either of those two, you're using, or even Adobe,
like if you're using Photoshop, things like that.
You are now tied down to basically whatever that company decides.
You're kind of at their mercy.
And even hearing that, you might not really realize
exactly what you're at their mercy for.
Like, okay, so a big deal, you're making flyers in Photoshop,
or you're recording your music in GarageBand,
or Logic Pro, and you're releasing your albums,
or you're coordinating things with Excel,
and Outlook, and things like that, organizing protests,
or whatever you're doing.
Well, to understand how you're being tied to this company,
again, you have to kind of stay with me
with a little bit of an analogy.
So you have to understand what these computer companies
actually deal in in terms of currency.
And one of the major, major currencies
of the modern computer industry is information.
And do you think about it?
How do they get information from people?
Like this whole business model of everything, pretty much,
right now, is really geared toward getting people's information.
And at first, it starts out with really innocuous,
kind of boring information, your name,
your address, your phone number, things like that,
your age, your occupation, what company you work for,
how many people are in the company?
What your paycheck is?
Are you a student?
Do you rent or own the house?
All that good stuff.
So the really, the easiest stuff, your name,
your address, your phone number, your birthday,
is the stuff like that.
Pretty much all the company has to do is offer like free email,
and you'll go sign up, and you'll give them all your information
without really thinking about it.
And you might give them fake information,
so the next step after that is sales.
So you go on to a record store online,
or you find a good album on eBay that you want to buy,
or something like that.
And in order to make that purchase, of course,
you have to register for the site.
And if you give them fake information,
they won't let you purchase, because they're checking all these facts
against whatever credit card or bank card or whatever you're using.
And so it continues.
And with proprietary OS operating systems,
they even make you give their information to them
just if you want to use the computer.
So you buy this computer, or you inherit a computer from someone,
and you go to install the software, or you turn it on,
and if it's a fresh install of the operating system,
it's asking you all kinds of information
that there's just no reason a computer
that you just want to do some typing on,
or surfing the web on, should need to know all of this information
about you, but you don't have a choice you have to put it in,
so you enter it all in.
And now who knows where that information has gone.
Okay, so this is personal information about you.
What about the information that you generate on your computer,
and you're going to want to access later on.
So if I've made a lot of, if I've written a lot of articles
that I've written or something like that,
if I've done that in a proprietary format like Microsoft Office,
what guarantees that in two years,
when there's a new version of Office,
what guarantees that I'm going to be able to open that information back up
and get to my, to the stuff that I've written?
Well, honestly, nothing guarantees that.
It's on the end user, it's on you as the computer user,
to make sure that your data is being updated constantly
into the latest formats that the company comes out with.
And what does this force you into?
Well, it forces you into making purchases,
because now you have to purchase from them the latest and greatest version
of whatever software you initially created your data in.
So suddenly, everything that's important to you,
whether it's photos, music that you've purchased from their online store,
text documents that you've written, emails that you've received,
all of this information that quite possibly could be really,
really important to you, because so much of our lives now is on a computer.
All of this stuff is basically subject now to whether you are going to come up with a cache
to make sure that you are completely up to date.
And, you know, it's a real pity if you've got so much data
that you're not able to open up all those files in the latest version
of whatever software package it is and make sure it is up to date.
So if you skip a couple of versions,
you could be screwed no matter what.
And this is a real, real danger because it actually happens a lot more often
than you might realize, especially in the non-techie world.
If you're, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably at least interested
in technical things, things that go on in the computer.
There's a lot of people who are not so technically inclined.
And a lot of people don't get a new computer every two years,
like a lot of techie people do.
Whether they just inherit like something that someone thought was broken
and they take it home and they tinker with it and they repair it
or whether they actually go out and purchase the computer.
But a lot of people don't update that often.
And so when people bring data into someone such as myself who is technical
and they say, well, this is from my old computer
and I can't seem to open it in my new computer.
I mean, a lot of times they've skipped so many versions of the software
that they were using it, using to create that data
and that there's really little or no chance
that they're going to be able to get that data out of that format
and into something that can actually read it.
So it happens all the time.
You have to really be careful with it if you're dealing with proprietary operating systems.
Now on Linux, you don't have that problem because there's not the same culture
in the delivery method of the new product.
There's no motivation for Linux, which is a free environment.
There's no motivation for them to come out with new versions of something
that break everything else behind it
or make it more complex for you to access your data
so that you have to purchase the latest and greatest stuff all the time
in order to stay up to date, kind of keeping up with the business.
There's not really that kind of business side of things in Linux.
It's just about your data, you having control over your data
and not being subject to anyone or any company
that is going to be providing you with these tools
and that also has the alternate motive of making money off of all of that.
To be free from all of these corporate schemes,
you're just going to need a computer system that runs a user environment
that belongs to you and belongs to no one and has no ulterior motive.
And the name of that operating system, that environment, is Linux
and you can find a lot of information about it online.
There's Ubuntu.com, there's Fedora, Project.org.
It offers you not only solidarity, but it also offers you the chance
to be able to run software on older hardware.
So if you are trying to be a computer user without supporting the market
that just forces new product on people every, at least every six months,
more often it's every two months.
If you're trying to stay away from that, there are Linux distributions
for things that are very, very old and that it runs fine on older hardware.
So if you've got access to an older computer, Linux might very well be the way
that you're able to use that computer at all, so give that a shot.
And of course, Linux is the ultimate DIY project.
Linux is for a community and it's by that same community.
It is, it's very punk without even knowing, I think, that it's punk.
So, and it's very anarchist without knowing it's anarchist.
So if you go that way, Linux, you'll find that you'll fit right into the Linux community.
This has been Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Klatt too.
Be sure to check back at hackerpublicradio.org for new episodes.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-C for all of her team.
Thank you.

141
hpr_transcripts/hpr0062.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
Episode: 62
Title: HPR0062: More than a wii bit of fun with the Wiimote
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0062/hpr0062.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:53:56
---
Genoa, scandals are dead, sure they're possible hellbuss.
I adult is much myself, with me.
Die!
Take them out!
That looks like it's it.
Oh, and Commander?
Do bring in the comms unit.
It's time for a broadcast.
Today, on Hacker Public Radio, we'll learn how to have more than just a wee bit of fun with the Nintendo Wii most.
Hey!
I am Morgan, the low-tech mystic, and you?
Well, you, my friends, would be listening to another fine episode of Hacker Public Radio.
And today, we're going to be discussing the basics of connecting a Nintendo Wii most to a computer running Windows XP via Bluetooth.
There's a lot of neat things that you can do with this.
I've been really impressed with the level of things that you can do and the basic relatively ease.
The only URL I'm going to give out in this episode of Hacker Public Radio is going to be Wheelie.org, which is where I've basically pulled a lot of my information.
They've got a wonderful wiki running there that has a whole lot of information on how to get the stuff running.
They also are doing something rather interesting.
They are collecting donations for a, basically, I guess, a correct term would be a prof for the first person to be able to get Linux running on a Wii without voiding the warranty.
Basically, that means not cracking it open and soldering on fancy mod chips and doing that.
They're talking about getting a USB, hard drive, or external media bay, something like that, and booting off of that, or something creative like that.
But that basically you're not cracking it open and obviously voiding the warranty.
Right now, they've got $147, but I'd be interesting to see how far that goes and who gets it and nothing else.
It's kind of neat. You can get some money for a Git Linux to run on a Wii, so definitely check that out.
Right now, we're going to talk about Windows XP.
Please reserve the throwing of Rothen vegetables until the end of the episode.
Thank you.
But if you want to go to hackerpublicradio.org, you can find a list of all the links and all the source code that we're going to be discussing in this episode.
So you're not going to listen to me ramble on about URLs.
You're just going to listen to me ramble.
Excellent.
So basically, if you have a computer, you have Windows XP, you have Bluetooth capability, whether natively or with a dongle, and you have a Nintendo Weemote, you are ready to world.
The first thing you are going to need to do is you're going to need to go to hackerpublicradio.org, and you're going to need to go to this episode's show notes.
And you are going to click on the links, and you are going to first go to the Wheelie Wiki, which is going to discuss getting the Weemote to work as a mouse in Windows XP.
And basically, it's going to tell you to install a few programs.
Basically, it recommends that you install Blue Soleil, which is a Bluetooth program that works very nicely on Windows from what I've used so far of it.
I'm very glad that they recommended it.
It's very nice and easy to get all your devices to work, and it's just rather impressive as far as how it scans and does other neat things.
It kind of reminds me of Linux on the command line.
So it's all that, but it was still kind of impressive to see on Windows XP nonetheless.
And it makes everything easy to sync up your Weemote with the computer.
Once you have used Blue Soleil's free program or wallet shareware, and then you can buy it or whatnot.
But anyway, once you've used Blue Soleil's program to sync the Nintendo Weemote with your Windows XP computer, please reserve the throwing of vegetables until the end of the episode.
Once you've got that all going, you're going to need to install a program, a program called Glove Pi.
Pi stands for, I think it was program interface emulator.
Basically, it's a program that was developed for mapping out keystrokes and things like that with virtual reality gloves.
If you ever listened to any of my episodes of Ninja Night School Radio, there were a few episodes where I talked about ordering and getting a P5 data glove, which was this kind of little cheap, rinky dink virtual reality glove that I used this weird looking IR sensor stand to track the data and stuff like that.
This little glove was really cheap, so I had fun playing with it.
But this is a program that lets you write scripts and macros and a lot of neat things that you can do with the glove and stuff like that.
Also, they have tweaked it and developed it to work with the Nintendo Weemote.
And the very nice thing is that you follow the link in the show notes and you download the zip of Glove Pi 3.0.
And once you unzip that folder, it's going to have your Glove Pi EXE and it's also going to have a text file that is documentation.
And that is a wonderful file. It's got all the basic stuff you need to know for working with Glove Pi and what commands do what and basically how to get started.
I'm not a coding expert, but the documentation was enough for an experienced coder as my an in experienced coder as myself.
Sorry, excuse me. Please reserve of the vegetables until the end of the episode.
Thank you. But I basically allowed a very inexperienced coder as myself to read through the documentation and it's fairly simple.
Well, at least to me, it was how it was working and I guess because I'm working with robots right now.
And that this that we moat basically is using a Cartesian coordinate mapping system, which basically means it has an x, y, and z coordinate grid system, much like a CNC machine and other such devices.
Anyway, rambling, rambling, rambling. Please reserve the throwing of what vegetables and eggs until the end of this episode.
So the next step once you have your remote sink to via Bluetooth, blue sole, however, and Glove Pi running is that you're going to copy the script that is beneath all the instructions there, which is the bare minimum basic instructions for getting the remote to work as a mouse.
On your computer, which is really neat and the basic way this works is you're going to copy the text, the real code that is on the page there.
And then you're going to paste that into Glove Pi and you're going to click and you're going to tilt, you're going to tilt the we moat up and down to move the mouse up and down and you're going to twist it side to side.
So you're going to like turn it, you're going to roll the remote, the we moat, remote, whatever.
You're going to roll that back.
Roll that back, roll.
You're going to roll that back home because it's so we moat back.
Yeah, sometimes I just say bastard.
Okay, so, but yeah, you move the we moat up and down to move the mouse up and down and you twist it or roll the we moat side to side.
And instead of actually moving it side to get the mouse to move side to side.
And it's for the most part, it probably needs a little bit of tweaking each we moat is a little bit different as far as how it's calibrated and how it's going to work with your computer.
So you'll definitely need to go in and tweak with the code a little bit.
And this is a fun time for somebody who's maybe never missed within the code to go in and maybe have a chance to learn some code.
This is a very easy kind of system to go in and especially if you're kind of quote unquote reverse engineering.
But if you're listening to Haggar Public Radio's and you know, this is a little bit of reverse engineering.
You're going to have the code from the make the we moat work as a mouse and you can go in and what it does when you actually run it.
It shows in the debug window, which will be at the top right hand corner of glove pie.
Lovely. Please reserve the throwing of rotten fruit and vegetables plus eggs until the end of this episode.
Thank you.
But basically at the top right hand corner in the debug window of glove pie, it's going to show you the values for the XYZ of the we moat.
So you can actually watch those values change as you swing the we mode around and kind of get an idea for you know what these values should be.
And as you look to the code, if you spent just a little bit of time looking through the documentation, you can easily match up what's going on in the documentation.
So you don't really need to be a code ninja or code master.
You just be able to kind of be a matching ninja.
Find what's going on in the mouse code there and basically match it up with the documentation in the glove pie folder.
And basically, boom, you can, if you can match, then you can figure out what's going on there. And it's fairly simple.
So if you want to calibrate your we mode, if it's a little bit off, for example, when I first ran my we mode as a mouse program, my we mode wanted to go to the top and to the left just a little bit, but it always just slammed up to the top of the window.
So basically I had to calibrate and what I did to calibrate is I laid it flat on its belly with the the A button facing up straight in the air.
I guess that's obvious if you have a we mode.
But anyway, what you're, but what you're going to do is you're going to see once you run the program with the we mode laying on this belly, you're going to see the debug values for the XYZ coordinates.
And you can use that going into the code to set that as your basically a reference point in robotics, we would call it your home point.
So, but basically this is your starting point from where the we mode is going to be.
So if you were say naturally going to be holding the we mode at a say 90 degree angle, then you would want to say how you're holding the we mode naturally as your home point or as your starting point for where you're using as the calibration.
But if you want to lay it flat on its belly or however you're going to be holding that's how you want to calibrate this little monkey and then what you've got that going it's it's kind of neat.
You can play around with the values the the twist or will the role and the different values and see how that changes the speed and right there.
Hey, you just got a little coding experience and if you're coding mentioned, then it will be really easy to jump in this and tweak around and have a little bit fun with.
And speaking of having a little bit of fun, the neatest thing that I found so I actually got this working actually got this working today at school.
I have a two hour break in between classes at college and so I spent that time today working on the we mode and there is a script.
There'll be a link to the show notes. It is the the we saver.
And basically what this does is it maps out the keys on the we mode to play a sound effects through the computer speakers of a lightsaber and it reacts to you swing it around and it's really neat.
And if you listen to the beginning of this episode and basically what you heard there was me tweaking out having fun with my we mode basically what I did is I brought the laptop out into the car and I hooked the headphone jack up to the stereo and I turned down the internal mic on the laptop down really low.
And it turned stereo up really loud and I swung the we mode around the we saberscript running and screened and had a good time and made a neat little intro and basically that's how that worked.
But basically if you follow the link in the show notes, all you need to do is copy and paste to that code and boom.
You are actually I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and just say the top PI or whatever the the glove program is or the glove pie program.
And you can just download that file and check that out and you'll really like it. It also comes with a sound package that is actually you know how you're generating sound effects from the lightsaber and all that.
So you'll need to install that into the basically it'll be a zip file and you'll need to unzip that and put it in the we mode scripts directory and make sure that in your code it matches up with where you have the folder directed.
And as long as you have the we sabers script saved in the we mode folder and then you have the lightsaber sound effects saved in the we mode scripts holder, you should be OK.
And basically once you have that unzipped and you run the program, you press for the trigger button and that's going to turn on your lightsaber and you can swing it around and you'll have cool swooshing motions.
And you can hold down the trigger and it makes the sound effect of lightsabers clashing upon lightsabers or another effect. And then if you hold down the down button on the D pad while you swing it around, it makes the sound effect of at least in my mind reflecting lasers from the lightsaber like they would do.
So it's basically a lot of fun. The A button is what quits the program or it doesn't quit the program, but it closes or quote unquote closes the lightsaber.
However, you want to say that, but the sound effects and everything is just really fun. And like I said, I was missing with this today call it in my break in between classes and I was sitting in the break room and I got it working while I was sitting in the break room and I started swinging it around before I looked up from being hunched over my laptop.
And after I had swung it around and made lots of noise as a lightsaber and the weamote I looked up and the break room was apparently full because it was break in between the classes and so everybody was staring at me because I'm making lightsaber noises and waving around the weamote.
For the most part, everybody was pretty cool. Nobody like through rotten fruit vegetables or rotten eggs in my general direction. So a general victory is considered in such situations.
But yeah, it was pretty cool. I had a couple guys from the electronics and the graphics program that came over and like, you know, we're like, hey, dude, what the hell are you going on?
And so, you know, I showed them my setup and let them play around with the weamote and swing it around and, you know, the weasever and all that good fun. So it was really cool.
And I'll have to say this is just a really fun, anything to get set up and it's not really super awesome as far as and it's going to change your life.
But it's something that's really easy to do and it's really fun that just makes you smile and it's something that doesn't take very long to set up.
That you can, you know, take your laptop over to your buddies with your weamote and be like, hey, dude, check this out.
You know, and it's guaranteed smiles and it's just really neat and it's also a perfect example of in my mind what hacking really is.
Hacking isn't about stealing credit cards or hurting individuals or taking advantage of people.
It's about doing creative things. It's almost like an artist but with technology. So it's got a different twist. And in a way, it's much like what we're doing with the weamote in this episode.
And we're taking a device that's made to be a video game controller and we're making it into a computer mouse and into a lightsaber and basically doing things that it's not designed to do.
And that's really neat. And in my mind, that's a whole lot that just emphasizes and has the hacker spirit.
So that's why I decided to share this with you today. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode of hacker public radio.
I hope if you guys have a weamote, you check this out. And if you don't think about it, you know, a Bluetooth thongle, you know, maybe 40 bucks.
Weamote, I got my news. I think I paid 30 bucks for it and it came with a nice little rubber grip. So when I smack people with it, it doesn't damage my weamote.
So that way I can still bust people around with it. And it doesn't hurt my weamote because I don't want to smack somebody outside the head and then have to go by a new weamote, you know, you need usability.
I need to be able to smack multiple people. And in case the zombie invasion ever happens, it'd be really cool to run around my laptop for however long the battery lives and smack zombies on the head lightsaber style.
But anyway, I think it's about time. So those of you in the listening lines that may have collected rotten fruit vegetables and or eggs, you may feel free to already your ammunition.
Once again, thanks for listening. You guys out there, think about it. It's maybe say max 70 80 dollar investment. If you don't have if you don't have a Bluetooth or a weamote, assuming you have a computer when those XP, it's really easy to set up and going.
And it's just really fun to show off and it's it's really fun to see the reaction from people when you know you set down with your computer and whip out the weamote and then all of a sudden it's making lightsaber sound effects and you're zip it around.
And it's really neat and it's really fun. So nevertheless, I'm going to end this up. Thanks for listening and you guys have a great day and tune in tomorrow for another excellent episode.
Of Hacker Public Radio.
You
You

58
hpr_transcripts/hpr0063.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
Episode: 63
Title: HPR0063: WebCalendar
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0063/hpr0063.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:54:00
---
minutes.
.
.
.
.
Welcome to another episode of HPR. I am your host Enigma, and today I'll be talking about
Web Calendar. Web Calendar is a PHP-based calendar application that can be configured as a single
user calendar, a multi-user calendar, or an event calendar that is viewable by visitors.
Web Calendar has a ODBC backend that stores all of the events users in a database. You
can set it up to use MySQL, PostgresSQL, Oracle DB2, Interbase, MSSQL Server, or pretty much
any other ODBC compliant database. Web Calendar has multi-lingual support. It supports up to
30 languages which are on its site. I'll have a link to its site in the show notes. The calendar
server can be viewed with any I calendar compliant calendar application, such as Mozilla Sunbird,
Apple ICal, or Nome Evolution, or any RSS-enabled application like Firefox, Thunderbird, RSSL,
FeedDemon, or Blog Express. It has built-in RSS feeds, which I am currently playing with on our
hacker events.org that's powered by Web Calendar. That's the site that I have the most
experience with this application, and if you go check that out, you'll see the practical
application for this package. The one thing that I don't like about this app is that the
style sheets aren't the most pretty. Let's put it that way. I'm still playing with it. I don't
like the style sheets that are available, and I can't find any skins for it. If anyone's good
in CSS, please email me. I've got a few projects that I just don't have the artistic talent for,
and could use some guidance. Some features that I do like, it has you can view the calendars
basically their day, week, month, or year, just like any other calendar application. Really nothing
special there. You can view others calendars. You can view someone else's calendar on top of
your calendar, so you can compare events. You can add edit and delete users, add edit and delete
events. Repeat events like, for example, we have our bin rev meetings scheduled every third
Friday of every month. We have, and you can put in a description, the website and just a little
description of what the event is. You have a configurable custom event fields, user configurable
preferences for colors. You also have a default color scheme that I've been playing with. You can check for
scheduling conflicts like Outlook does with its calendar. You have email notifications for new updated
deleted events. You have RSS for update and new updated and deleted events and also unapproved events. If
you have a calendar that supports anonymous adding of events, you can import events from I calendar,
V calendar, or Palm. You have an optional general access, which is no login required to allow
calendar to be viewed with people without a login, like hacker events has, so anybody can view the
calendar. Also, you can publish free busy schedules to all users, kind of like Outlook does. The RSS
supports that puts a user's calendar into RSS. Again, I haven't played with the RSS feeds enough
yet to know how well they work. I have a test site that I'm playing with at the moment before I
actually drag it over to hacker events. You can subscribe to remote calendars, hosted elsewhere,
and then either on I calendar or each calendar formats, and then the user authentication is web-based
HTTP, LDAP, or NIS. A nice part of the package is it has an add-on that has a capture in it. Back in
late last year, we were having a lot of trouble with a spam on the site who gets, I had like 15,000
spam messages within a month or two. It was just absolutely insane. You can also implement a
capture on the site that will limit your spam. Also, one thing I don't like about the site is there
is no select all for the unapproved events. Basically, you have to delete them one by one or go
and go behind the scenes and go into the database and delete them out of the database table, which is what we
ended up doing. If anyone has any questions, comments about this package, please email me. Again,
if anyone has any experience with CSS and wants to help out on a couple projects, please email me. Also,
if anyone wants to do a show or be a part of this hacker-public radio thing, we've got going on,
email me at admin at hacker-publicradio.org. We will set you up with whatever you need to make that
happen, as well as give you some show ideas, things like that. That's it for today. I'm
Enigma again and have a nice day.

20
hpr_transcripts/hpr0064.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
Episode: 64
Title: HPR0064: Tech Music: Payphone under Streetlight
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0064/hpr0064.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:54:03
---
Uhm...
Thank you for using a Verizon Payphone.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.
Please contact our switchboard.

143
hpr_transcripts/hpr0065.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
Episode: 65
Title: HPR0065: Cowon iAudio U3 review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0065/hpr0065.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:55:08
---
Music
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio at episode 65.
My name is Dave and I normally do my podcast recording on my way home from work in my
car.
But tonight, or I should say this morning, as it is 107 am, I am in my house and I am in
a room that has one, two, three, seven, eight, and ten computers in it.
And each one of these computers is running some variant of Linux or Unix.
But the device that I want to talk about tonight, the one I hold in my hand, does not run Linux.
I want to talk about the Cowan U3.
This, I think, still is the smallest personal video player you can buy.
It's a Cowan audio U3 and I love this device.
I love it so much.
I bought a second one so I now have two just in case the first one breaks.
I've had the first one for at least a couple of years now.
And it is a quote unquote to use the improper term, an MP3 player.
It's much more than that as it plays more than just MP3s.
It plays videos.
It's a picture viewer.
It does the standard things that these small MP3 devices do.
It has an amazing sound quality.
I'm not an audio file, so if I were to read to you the specs, the audio specs, there
would be meaningless to me, but you can go to cowanamerica.com products, cowanamerica.com
slash product, slash audio slash U3 to find out more about this device.
They're relatively inexpensive.
You can get one for, depends on where you look, maybe $120 to $180.
Maybe they come in, I think one gig and four gig, there may be a two gig model.
But it's about the size if you look at your smallest finger and your ring finger.
It's a little bit less wide than those two fingers are side by side, and it's about
as tall as my ring finger.
So you've seen this form factor before in some other devices, and it's got a joystick
or a toggle on the front and a small screen, not sure the size of the screen, I'll talk
in my head.
But this thing gets about 20 hours of battery life.
It gets the video screen, you can cover it with your thumb, it's small, but I have
watched 96 episodes of Justice League Unlimited, Sean of the Dead and Napoleon Dynamite, I think
of the movies I've watched on this thing.
The 96 episodes of Justice League Unlimited were quite enjoyable.
Even though the screen is small, if you're holding it in your hand, it's quite viewable.
I don't think it's a full 30 frames per second or anything like that, it's probably half
of that, but it is quite viewable.
I don't use this device for video except if I'm on a plane or something, but the main thing
I use this device for is to record.
I record my podcast on our audio U3, and before that I use the iRiver T30, I think, but
what I really like about the audio other than the fact that it plays MP3s, WMAs, ASAF,
waves, hogs, and flags, and other than the fact that it works as a USB-Mass storage device
and Linux.
The thing I like most about it is that I can record on it with a non-powered microphone
and I can hear myself, so I can monitor the volumes or the volume of my voice.
I can hear myself with the iRiver T30 that's something I couldn't do.
I would just have to listen to myself talk, not through the headphones, and I really had
no way of determining if I was clipping or anything like that.
With the audio though, and I don't know about the other devices, I know some people that
have about other models of our audio's, and they've tested them out and tried to record
with a non-powered microphone without much success, but like I said, I have two of them,
and I can stick in just a regular old computer headset and it is thing, and I can record
my voice with a non-powered microphone, so I guess that means it's got a preamp in
it, even though according to their website, you should not be able to do this, I can,
and I've upgraded the firmware probably four or five times, and I'm not lost this functionality.
I guess that's one of the drawbacks is unlike some of the more recent models of our audio
players, this does require Windows to upgrade the firmware, so I have to use my work laptop,
it's an XP laptop to do that with, I thought at one time these things had been discontinued,
but I don't think that's the case, because I mean, there's still a whole page dedicated
to this player at Calon America, and I'm sure Calon Global too.
But it works well with Linux, it works well with Mac OSX, I would imagine, and it works
well with Windows, I'm sure, but this is the device for me, I've owned, like I said,
two of them, I couldn't do my podcast and my call without it, I can use a powered
microphone, I've recorded the Upstate Carolina Linux users group podcast using a powered
conference room microphone, I have run a microphone through a mixer board to this, I have run
just a non-powered microphone to this, and through it all I've been able to monitor what
is being recorded with headphones, so it's really great, I'm even able to using a device
about it, Radio Shack, that strange enough has no identifying part number on it, so
whatever, if you go to RadioShack.com and just search for a cell phone recorder or mobile
phone recorder, you'll see it, but it is a device that you plug your cell phone into,
and the other end you plug into your recorder, and on that side I've recorded cell phone
conversations I've recorded, audio with a non-powered microphone, I've recorded audio,
a powered microphone, and I've recorded audio with the line in, I guess the other drawback
to this is that it records 128 kilobits per second, which is, I guess, CD quality, which
is fine for a podcast, but it records in WMA, which is not a problem for me because you
can easily convert that in Linux from the command line or several other graphical tools,
but that's a little bit of a pain, I keep hoping with every firmware release or upgrade
that they'll add, you know, functionality recording, I'll get a play, I'll get a play
flack, I'll get a play wave, I'll do all these codecs or file formats, so to play them
just fine, but you can only record in WMA, which is just a little bit of a hassle, but
I only, I guess it's a fourth generation iPod I've had for a long time, and I put rockbox
on it a couple of years ago, and have not looked back, I really only use it for long
trips, listening to music, but this is one device that I've, I see no need whatsoever
to replace the firmware, I really enjoy the firmware, I guess the user interface, especially
like I was hesitant when I first got it about this toggle switch, you've seen these
joystick-like buttons that stick up off these players sometimes, but it's got an audible
click when you navigate with it, you know, you can go up, down, right, left, and you can
press down on the button, and it's got a lot of button of course, but what that toggle
switch really allows you to do is operate this thing in your pocket, I mean it's just
really small, and you don't have to see the interface, you just got, I guess, tactile
feel, you can feel it, and you can hear it, so in the dark you can navigate through
the folders that contain your music, it's just, it's got everything I need, and it's got
themes, it's customizable, I guess, graphically, but there's really nothing about this I don't
like, it's got an FM player, if you can record, I've already mentioned a line-in or voice,
there's a, there's a, in the settings under recording, you can select that you want to record
using an external mic, which is what I do for my podcast, there's a voice activate feature,
so it will only record when it hears a voice, there's a feature called AutoSync that I'm
not real sure of, what that's about, but you can record the line-in volume and microphone
volume, you can record the bit rate of which you record FM radio, because it's got FM
radio built into it, you can control the bit rate that you record, voice-at, and line-in
at, it's just, it's just really nice, I mean I've got the Debbie and Swirl on it, it's
my, my default wallpaper, it comes with a graphical equalizer, and like I said, I'm
not an audiophile, a bunch, a bunch of other stuff, whatever, BVE is, mock three bass,
MP and hands, 3D surround sound, pan, for whatever reason you'd want to have the audio
move from your left to your, left speaker to right speaker, repeatedly that's there, with
some recordings, I imagine this has to do with either being a variable bit rate or constant
bit rate, I'm not sure, but you can adjust the play speed, so you can speed up the speed
that the audio plays back, so if you're in a hurry or if you have a lot of podcasts
to listen to or whatever, this, this thing's really nice, it's really inexpensive, when
I bought the second one, I was in the market to replace, I'm not replaced, but to buy
back up and case my first audio died on me, because that's what I recorded a podcast with,
and that, that model's only a one gig, and I was thinking, and I'm having to do, I listed
a lot of podcasting, one gig just wasn't cutting it, so I was in a market to buy another
device, and I looked around at a lot of them, but I, I knew I'd been able to get another
audio, and I looked at, I guess the, it's at the D2 and the, the A7, and I forget some
of the models that I looked at, you know, bigger, better, newer, supposedly, but I came back
to the U3, mainly because I know it does the line-in recording, it does the, the external
microphone recording, it's the form factor I like, it's the, the, the toggle is nice and
sturdy, and allows for blind operation, and I said, the only drawbacks that I can think
of, and I've owned these for about two years now, is it requires Windows to do the firmware
upgrades, and it records in WMA, but other than that, I am very happy with the U3, this
is the best portable audio device I've ever owned, if one of these breaks I'll buy a third
thing, I guess, if there's a third thing that I would list as bad as I, as I've dropped
the first one that I own, I've dropped it several times, but the last time I dropped
it, the whole switch that, that locks the, the buttons, so you won't inadvertently press
one of them, it broke, I mean, it's still, it's still on the machine, it didn't break
off, but I guess the plastic tab inside the case no longer functions with that last drop.
Anyway, I, I, I feel I'm beginning to ramble, and it's, it's very late, so that's my review
of the audio U3, if you're in the market for a, an audio device to listen to podcast
two, to record a podcast own, or even to watch video, you owe it to yourself to check
out the audio U3, all right, until tomorrow, this has been Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
. . . . . . . . . .

235
hpr_transcripts/hpr0066.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,235 @@
Episode: 66
Title: HPR0066: April Fools Day Traditions
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0066/hpr0066.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:57:21
---
Thanks for watching.
Yeah, you're right on the edge of the ceiling until it's not like that, but it's very
memorable.
Yeah, getting a boy there to overcome a few rules, most of us, because most of us even
don't know what we did there, it's just how many we felt.
Yeah, and that's why I used to say the kids, who, for me, they don't get fuzz, it's how
to be nice and small, but see them side to get messing it out, so I hope you even
know what it was.
Well, he's good, he was high, and in less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less
serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious,
nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer,
he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's
a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little
bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less
serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious,
nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer,
he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he's a little bit less serious, nearer, he
s a little bit less serious, nearer, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot
But now what you do now, and I send you a message from
but I'll stop asking you all the time.
You'll get on time, bro.
You'll see your progress, but some of the salary,
but I can't see any dealer who's selling it.
So now it's not so obvious.
I mean, it's just not up.
He'll in fact be doing that, you know,
because you're either there is not somebody up here
for us, but you know, it's kind of dirty.
It's not a lot of fun.
It's just like, it's just not,
that all of us are hot at the outside.
So there's come on.
You're not getting it, you're getting it, you're getting it.
Plus hot.
Yeah, it's just never enough.
It's just okay.
It's too much.
Yeah.
For the day, as well.
For the day that she was going to be us.
I know you're from that time.
I better get her first.
Okay.
Let's do it.
It's a little right now.
It's just the end of the day.
But I can't begin to find a little bit.
It looks hard.
Right.
You know, for the email now,
almost you are.
And we're doing it all.
It's almost open.
And she's like, it's very good.
Not great.
You're a little scared.
We'll rest now.
Rest now from the set.
Sooner or two.
In five years,
now it's really still an
ambitious and a map of what ever we have moisture.
And
what will go through it?
Oh, yeah.
I struct,
Yeah.
I make a little
shower here.
Said you know we still went out.
Right here.
You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you
know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
Now I'll say that is our next service and to you an url red trophy.
And I am a semi-cam right now.
If you won't come to see us anymore,
there's a nation of war on the ground.
There's half an earth man per verse.
And to you, yeah.
There you, there you, there you go.
And to you, yeah, you bugger.
And all of them sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks.
And the sucks in the blood.
And the sucks me a lot.
And the suck in the blood.
And then.
And the suck in the blood.
And then.
And the suck in the blood.
And stolen from me.
And the suck in the blood.
And stolen from me.
And stolen with me.
And stolen.
And stolen with me.
or understand that they get a, yeah, and then why do you
serve for this?
It's not really a recent question,
and besides, I've been up to, uh,
serve us in this, I got 10, I got to us.
Well, I was at zero, it's a gift.
My, maybe it'll be, oh, I look like I've got
wasn't either a, or a snack, or that gift,
and it'll, say, if, now, real or not,
well, it was an easy game, but still, uh,
first, I mean, it's gonna, uh,
an easy game, Brazil, my,
an easy game, now, so, I'll serve for no one,
well, it was an easy game, or a bunch of them,
an easy game, or希望, and the weeks.
They don't, uh, they, uh, stuff, maybe if,
you look at them, hi, not much.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's the whole, n$%
and, syrup, or it has to be a certificate,
no threat, but we, uh, we started
by outside the eye peeled, making the third
old citizen realize howuting,
how devastating, huh?
You'll, you'll see, its, uh,
Smash?
Weird, you'll see, as,
I'm outside a girl.
I mean, truckboat?
So I thought,
her portfolio,yeah, her, yeah.
And this, and there was sort of,
unique border, where we was.
I, written, they, with stretchers.
And they gave pauses.
here or soon that was till all I did, well for better year right now,
unless you have zero yet further enough.
Oh, isn't it?
nightlight,
night?
Good night how are you?
I was going to steal a ride to see if he's a girl.
I guess we were going to take a negative note of,
a girl from Nippon at the end of the world and whatnot.
So yeah, what's near is getting in there.
Girl, what happened?
It is, did a girl for a flight every CV.
But this night, I walked you scantily,
and they'll say the hours, and they'll say to me,
a little bit before I said anything going on.
So yeah, what's the news?
Yeah, I was afraid they'd pray,
and they'd much do hope you survive a little bit.
And that's me, an ill好 I'm so your blood.
And there was me.
And I had a washingole town.
So I guess relatives had no other time.
And I had a washingole town and I just guess her,
if I heard you see all this stuff in the room,
you tell me what's جdriening you in your blood.
And they want to see this sinew.
Now her ability is now high,
everything goes healthy and that thatתل conceived a witch.
That you know what?
It feels impossible to feel the same way.
But, yeah, didn't man want a while?
Was it a beep get dinner?
So yes, and I just got it.
I'm crossing our streets yet so we'll check that out.
So, send it all back.
It's the light.
You just don't tell me.
Oh, you're so good.
I know.
Look at this.
It's not too late.
We're crossing it.
I know, I'm sure.
Well, I don't see your mother.
So, girl, you just can't hear me.
You know, I was kind of close.
We're being locked in.
We're going to be better.
We're going to live now funny.
And that almost has a year.
I said it.
In the past, it's over.
I'm going to stay.
I lost my child by 10 when they left.
And when I found my child.
So my wife got attacked.
They cried, andI fell asleep.
I too was exposed to.
And I had.
And the other mother given permission.
So my mom was arrested that we had.
I can't even say six words and we were now ready to...
We lost her life.
Don't know.
Wake her.
Right.
Oh.
You bet.
What am I?
I don't know.
Would you...
So I'm going to floor with her while I on it to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able
be able to be able to be able
be able to be able to be able
be able to be able
be able to be able to be able to be able to be able
to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be
able to be able to be able
to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able
You
You
You

150
hpr_transcripts/hpr0067.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,150 @@
Episode: 67
Title: HPR0067: k-meleon
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0067/hpr0067.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:56:17
---
music
I don't think let's talk about K-Million.
This is Mad Rush.
First thing you want to know is what is K-Million?
K-Million is a lightweight browser that's based on the Mozilla slash Firefox rendering
engine.
This means that it renders the webpages the same way that either Simunkey or Firefox would.
Now, the main difference with K-Million and Firefox is Firefox uses its own API for the
user interface, where K-Million uses Windows native user interface API.
So I guess the second thing you want to know is, okay, why should I use K-Million instead
of other browsers like Firefox, Rob, or, you know, well, for me, I've been having some
trouble on my laptop lately.
I've been using Windows, and for whatever reason on this particular installation of Windows
or maybe some bad RAM or something on this computer, Firefox has been really acting
funny and, you know, unstable and quirky, and the Opera has actually been crashing.
I've never had a computer where Opera would crash before, but now I do.
So it occurred to me that I'd take a look at this old browser that I tried out a couple
of years back.
In fact, I originally checked it out when Firefox was called Phoenix.
This browser is small and it is fast and it is configurable.
I don't know about you guys, but I always have a problem where, as an example, I use my
Comcast email, I go to compose a message, and it wants to open up a new window.
I don't like Windows.
I like tabs.
That's why I bother with different browsers and I don't inter-explore.
Well, I know for Firefox that, at one point, I'd use an extension that lets you actually
redirect JavaScript windows like new open windows and stuff to new tabs instead.
This one out of the box, it lets you pick the default behavior between, like, either tabs,
like, when you open new links to a tab, it's going to a background tab, which is one
big thing.
I don't like about Opera.
I imagine it's way to change it, but I just never got around to it.
You can, I haven't said that when I open pages and stuff, it'll go to a new background
tab instead of the way Opera does it when you click a link, it goes directly to a new
tab.
It brings you over there.
It's in case, like, if you're from Wikipedia or something and you're just, I'll put up
a million tabs to read through, if you're like me, you'll end up losing your place and
go back track where you were.
I'm kind of frustrating.
This one out of the box, you can set it that way, and you can even have it so that when
you type in a URL to the, except for the, I mean, address bar, it'll open it in a background
tab or a new tab or the current tab, whatever you whatever you like, it's flexible.
This browser is flexible.
It really, if you go to the advanced preferences, it lets you change everything.
It's, that's, you know, really sells it to me.
It has features.
Even though, you know, it's relatively quick and easy to use and, you know, it's still
got a lot of functionality.
Here's back when I used it.
I really noticed a big improvement even, even years ago, even though Firefox was quick
then, it was quicker.
Now, I can really see a big difference between Firefox, it was how it used to be Firefox.
I'm sure plenty of you out there know how much my memory or it can be.
Well, when it eddles on my computer, it's almost at a 50 gig, 50 gig, I don't think so.
It uses about 50 megs, RAM.
K million, let's see what K million, I gotta, I gotta like, I don't know, maybe 10 tabs
open right now, let's say K million's using K million's, I got 26 megs under K million
with like 10 tabs and Firefox, right now, Firefox is at 93 megs, let's see how my tabs
I got open here, I got 4 tabs.
So, you know, I don't know if there's just like some kind of enormous memory leak on
the Windows version of Firefox or if my computer is just going crazy or Firefox is, Firefox
is just that bad nowadays, but yeah, it's taken up 93 megs, that's ridiculous, not every
computer has a gig RAM, you know, this computer is about 12, it's pretty good, but you know,
when your Firefox is using 100 megs or 4 tabs, I don't know what to do, you know, like,
so anyway, it's a K million, it's still, back in the day when I was just reusing it,
it really lacked as far as features, getting things like Flash on there, kind of like
non-existence, because even on Firefox, you know, back then, it was, you know, you had
to have, no, no thing at all, before you could get it, well, I don't know if it's a consequence
of already having Flash installed 4 Firefox, but right out of the box, I downloaded K million
and it has, I go to YouTube, no problem, it all works, so, aside from that, there's a
lot of other things that are nice, that are built in, that for Firefox, you'd need
like an extension, one of them is the Opera users, mouse gestures, so, you know, it's
got mouse gestures, you have your user agent switcher, you know, I think that's pretty
much standard, standard stuff nowadays, this is a user agent switcher, which is nice,
in case you get this website to say, oh, you're an explorer, you can't use it, it's got
a neat little thing, it's basically a session manager, let's you add, they call groups,
let's you add pages to a group, or layer, or layer, and in this browser, for whatever
reason, something I don't know, dislike is they, they call tabs, layers, whatever, same
thing, different name, anyway, the groups, if you have a couple of pages, well, the same
kind of interest, let's say web development, it would work on a website, and you want
to see how a few different pages look, when you change your style sheet, all at once,
well, you know, all in one window, so let's say you got five of those, the M2 group, when
you close the window, you can get back to them quickly, instead of making a new tab
for each one, you all you got to do is go to groups, and you pick your web development
one you just made, and it's also got a feature like how Firefox allows you to return
your previous session before you close the browser last, it lets you, as a defaults group,
if you will, it says last session, and you pick that same thing, so one of the things
that I like about this, I've had trouble in the past where I can't get the toolbars
exactly the way I want them, whether they don't let you put the address bar up with
a file menu, or they actually don't let you move the file menu, I think I believe Firefox
is like that, or was, I'm not sure, anyway, on this one I managed to get it down to two
rows for my other window, which means I have the most real estate possible for the web
page, which is great, because on this laptop, it only does 1024x768 natively, now right
now I've got to hook up to an external monitor, so I can do more, but it's still, you know,
it's something I want to do for when I am using the internal display on the laptop, it's
nice, you know, you can hold the machines, you can really make things smaller, visually,
you know, it uses that real estate, so now there's a couple of buttons on here, right
on the default toolbars that don't come on other browsers, one of them, which is really
nice, which is reminiscent of like, if you're using the Windows Explorer, or if you're
using Conver, it's an up directory button, or up one level, it lets you backpad all
up a level in the directory of the website, like let's say it's got, you know, your four
levels deep into some, some odd thing, and you can go back one, or up one, you can run
over there and, you know, to hit a back button to go there, instead of clicking the address
bar to leading the, whatever directory you're in, hitting enter, you hit one button and
it goes up, that's nice. Next up, it's got a go button, which is the same as every other
browser ever made, it has a, you type in the URL, you hit go, it goes, same as any answer.
Now this one, as far as the address bar is concerned, instead of having two separate
text entry fields for the search, you know, I like the Google search, or whatever, you
know, your favorite search engine is, the search and the URL area are together, it's
one. So it kind of, it's kind of nice when you end up putting like a, you know, a 10-page
long thing, it's a little search thing, and you only see a little bit of it. It's nice,
it's got like other browsers you can add or, I guess, remove your search providers, and
this one actually comes, unlike other ones, it comes with a quite a few, you know, you
can, I could go to the list, but it's this kind of point I was able to see for yourself,
it's got a lot. And I like the way it handles adding and removing them, for, for inner explorer,
for Firefox, actually, maybe just just for Firefox, I know you got to get like a little file,
I mean, it's a simple file, whatever, but you still got to go get it, you got to go look
at a list of extensions, search in there, find your wand, you know, this is just got like,
I guess you'd say that like a table view when you go to the preferences, and you can just
put them in right there, it's nice. So one of the problems you're going to face, which is browser,
is because it doesn't use the user interface that Firefox does, extensions for Firefox
aren't going to work. That sucks, that's one of the biggest things I like about Firefox,
so that's a kind of a problem. Now, at least for me, the most important extension I use on
a daily basis is adblock plus, and it turns out the guys who make that already, you know,
I guess they must have seen this browser, or maybe they use it even, they have a compatible
version for it. I looked at their website, it says, okay, download the adblock plus for Camellian,
unzip it to your Camellian root directory, and then follow these steps. Well, I started
looking at the steps, and I got a little confused, because they had you editing what would be the
equivalent of the Chrome user preferences for Firefox, the same sort of thing I hear, and there's
some discrepancies between what they wanted you to do, and what Camellian told you was the right
syntax, and this and that, and some looking around, looking around, and I said, you know what,
let me just try it. So I closed Camellian, I opened it back up again, what do you know, adblock
plus is installed, it says, hey, I found adblock, would you like to use it? I say, oh yes, I would.
So I got adblock on here, no problem. I bet you there's some other other ones out there,
but it's not going to just, you know, plug and play with other extensions, which is really
the deal breaker, but for me, as long as I have adblock, I can survive. That's the big one.
So cover groups, cover the extensions, or lack of extensions, I guess. Let's see what else we
got here. Mass festures, I mentioned that, yeah. Well, I think that's pretty much it.
If you get any questions about this, or comments, corrections, suggestions, whatever,
just give me a message at medrushatcomcast.net, and hopefully the audio quality of this one
wasn't too bad. I'm trying to find out a good, you know, go ahead, do things. Maybe next time
you better. I don't know. All right, see you later.

157
hpr_transcripts/hpr0068.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,157 @@
Episode: 68
Title: HPR0068: Shoulder Stretches!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0068/hpr0068.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:57:19
---
dilemma.
Okay.
And welcome back to Hacker Public Radio, this is Peter Nicolitis from The Fresh
Ubuntu Podcast.
Today, I'm going to be taking a bit of a different approach and covering something not overly
technical, but something that all of us hackers we ought to be aware of.
And that is basically a little bit of desktop ergonomics.
The reason I'm talking about this today is that just yesterday I was diagnosed as having
Bersitis, and that's a rather painful inflammation, in my case, in my shoulder.
And it makes certain things like opening doors and sometimes moving the mouse quite painful.
So that got me thinking about RSI's and other things that we get from sitting hunched
over a PC all day, and if you're like me, you probably spend a good amount of time at
your computer.
And not enough time stretching to make up for this.
Now it was, I think, over a year ago, I remember there was a woman that was interviewed.
I don't remember her name, but she was on the Linux link tech show.
And I remember her saying how like the worst possible thing for any human being was to
sit at a computer for more than an hour a day, something to that effect.
And I remember a link going off on her, and I thought it was one of the funniest episodes
ever.
I'm going to have to try to dig that one up.
Anyway, I'm not quite as extreme as her, obviously not, otherwise I wouldn't be in
the computer industry.
But what I've done is just collected a few simple exercises that you can do to help ease
the strain that you're putting on your body by sitting at your desk all day.
Now there are tons of ergonomic resources out on the internet.
I'm not going to go through a lot of them, but I'll link a couple here in the show notes.
And the best thing you can do for starters is make sure that your desk and your chair
are set up properly for you.
And basically that usually involves you sitting at mostly right angles, making sure that all
of your joints, whether your hips, your knees, your arms, etc., are at right angles when
you are sitting at your desk.
So if your chair is too high, and for instance maybe just barely your toes are touching the
floor, then your chair needs to be lower.
And if you feel like your desk is too high as a result, then you probably need a lower desk.
So something, these are things that you need to pay attention to and need to adjust so
that you have the right height.
Otherwise you may develop an injury or pain like I did where your desk was too high.
And as a result, you're constantly lifting your shoulder too much and that may have been
a contributing factor to my injury.
So that's one thing to do is make sure that your desk and your chair are set up properly.
You also want to make sure that your monitor or flat panel display is set up at the right
height.
It should not be too low so that your neck is always hanging down or too high so that
you're always straining up to look at it.
There are some different schools of thought.
I personally prefer to have the monitor just slightly below straight ahead so that I'm
looking down slightly when I look at the monitor.
But do a little digging to see what your own personal preference is on that.
But if you feel any sort of strain when you're sitting at your desk, you want to look into
that and adjust accordingly.
Now one thing that I think I feel a lot when I'm sitting at the desk is I feel the strain
in my shoulders.
And my friend said the expression he used to describe it was the shoulders love the ears.
Basically I was his way of describing how the shoulders would creep up over time.
If you ever walk outside and a chill wind, like a gust of wind goes through and you all
hunch up, that's exactly the same kind of thing that happens over time as you're sitting
at the computer.
Your shoulders will kind of like creep up.
What you don't realize is that that's putting a lot of tension on your muscles and tendons
and then the joints in the whole neck and shoulders area.
One great way to work that out is to take, if you don't have an exercise band like an
elastic band, that's great, but you don't need that.
If you have like an old t-shirt or in this case I have a smart wool sock here, which is
about a foot or so in length, what you can do is grab the sock or the t-shirt by the
ends so that your arms are about, well in my case about a foot and a half apart and hold
it out in front of you.
So I'm going to try to demonstrate this.
Of course you can't see it because it's not a video cast, but hey, hold it out standing
up straight and then what you want to do is grab both ends of the sock and try to get
your shoulder blades to come together.
So you're basically opening up the chest portion of your body, opening up your chest and
clenching your back.
This is almost exact opposite of what happens when you normally sit at a computer.
If you can envision yourself hunched over, that's the position that people normally end
up getting into when they sit at their computer.
You want to do the opposite.
You want to unfold, open up your chest, open and then clench up the scapula or your shoulder
blades.
So do that and then hold the sock out in front of you and just hold that position pulling
out on the sock and hold that position for about 15 seconds and you should feel the stretch
pretty quickly in the shoulder and the scapula area.
Now if the sound, the volume levels are changing a little bit because I'm moving back and
away from the mic as I actually do these stretches.
So once you've held that for about 15 seconds or more if you're comfortable with it, you
can repeat the stretch this time straight up.
So again, bring your shoulder blades together as much as you can while gripping the ends
of the sock and this time hold your arms straight above your head.
So you're doing the same stretch.
You're like Superman flying straight up and again pulling that and you should feel that
anywhere from your shoulders all the way down to the middle of your back and afterwards
it feels really great.
It may hurt while you're doing it.
You don't want to do it so much that it really, really hurts but you should at least feel
the stretch which is a good thing.
Once you've held that for 15 seconds or so, hold your arms down behind your back straight
behind.
So just grab the sock and on both ends with the sock behind you and do the same stretch
again, clenching your shoulder blades but this time with the sock down, so down at around
hip level.
So you're doing the same thing.
Now you're like the human cannon ball or what not.
You're flying forward but your arms are down behind you because the tendency when you're
doing this stretch is to lean forward.
That's not really going to help in the shoulder area.
The point is to bring these finally what you can do is do the same stretch once again.
Stand your shoulder blades together, but try to bring your arms up with both hands.
This is probably the hardest part of those shoulder blades together.
You want to bring your arms up behind your back, standing straight.
So instead of raising the mouth, you get good at raising your arms up behind you, it's
kind of tricky.
Squat, for instance, with your back to your desk or to a table and actually get yourself
more of a stretch but that's kind of advanced.
I would not recommend that if you're new to this or if you're likely to fall over because
then you could really wrench your arms out of their, you know, out of whack.
So you may not want to start with that.
But again, grab the sock, hold it behind you, clenching those shoulder blades tight, arms
about a foot and a half apart, and just raise them up as high as you can hold them until
you feel the stretch.
You don't want to feel extreme pain, obviously.
And then just hold it there for about 15 to 30 seconds.
And again, when you're done, you let those go.
If you've done all four of those stretches, you should feel an improvement in your shoulders
all around.
You should feel your muscles be a little more relaxed like they've gotten some exercise.
And this will help you long-term.
It will help you cope with hours a day of sitting at the keyboard.
So do those, do these stretches, literally they take a minute, right?
I gave you four positions and you know, each one takes about 15 seconds.
So you can spend one minute a day and help undo a lot of the hunched up posture that we
get from sitting at PC's all the time.
There are a number of other stretches you can do.
If you're interested in stuff like this, you know, things that you can do, sitting on
the floor, sitting in your chair, all sorts of things.
Right things for your lower back and your hips.
I'm not going to cover those right now because again, I said, shoulders are the most, most
common place where we need the work.
So that's it.
That's not really a super technical thing, but again, I think something that applies very
much to the hacking community.
So stand up straight, guys, you know, there's no excuse for poor posture.
All right.
Until next time, this is Peter from the Fresh Ubuntu podcast.
You can follow us over there at freshobuntu.org.
And my blog is over at pn72.com.
And if you've got any questions about stretching or shoulders or the wonders of bursitis, just
drop me a note.
Take care, everybody.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to H.P.R. sponsored by caro.net, so head on over to C.A.R.O.N.C.

1145
hpr_transcripts/hpr0069.txt Normal file
View File

File diff suppressed because it is too large Load Diff

361
hpr_transcripts/hpr0070.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,361 @@
Episode: 70
Title: HPR0070: Dr. Who
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0070/hpr0070.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:58:56
---
If you like the video please don't forget to subscribe dearly beloved all the channel's
This is Soak, and we will listen to her public radio, and this is very important.
Don't turn around.
Some of you will know immediately what I am going to talk about, but for those that
haven't, that was a clip from a television show, one of my all-time favourite shows ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.
The show started a while ago and has been running for a long time.
It's a science fiction show.
Following the adventures of a mysterious character who is from another planet,
and his travels around in his spaceship, yes I am trying to be particularly obtuse here.
Tell you what, we will do the first, second or so of theme music, if that helps anyone out.
Well if you know the series, that would be enough.
If you don't, you're not going to get anywhere with it.
I am, of course, talking about Doctor Who.
It started in the 1960s, 1963.
It was like the day after Kennedy got shot or something.
So it got really bad ratings for the first day, because everyone was worried about that.
So it's been going on for over 40 years so far.
They had a brief hiatus in the 90s where they stopped doing it.
They tried to do a film, it didn't kind of work out, but they're doing a new series now.
And I'm going to go over some of the brief, things about Doctor Who.
Some of the main enemies and things like that.
Doctor Who's just in the name of the show, he's not actually called Doctor Who.
He's just known as the Doctor.
And he's mentioned it several times.
You know, who are you, I'm the Doctor.
Doctor Who.
No, just the Doctor.
Kind of a running joke.
But he's just known as the Doctor.
He was born in Gana Frey, which is another planet.
His race is called time lords.
They are lords of time, basically.
They have time machines called Tardis's T-A-R-D-I-S time and relative dimension in space.
They can travel through time and space in their tardis.
The Doctor was born with life on Gana Frey, and he decided to go traveling.
At least it's the backstory.
So the time lords were all stuffed shit, kind of boring people.
They like the status quo they don't like interfering at all.
The Doctor decides he's going to go and interfere and actually help the universe out.
So he steals an old Type 40 Tardis.
The reason it's old is they can then say, oh, oops, something happened and it went wrong.
That's why, because it was in the shop for repair.
That's how he got access to it.
It has a chameleon device, for example, which is meant to make it blending with anything around.
But it doesn't.
It's stuck in the shape of a police box.
So that's the basic plot, like he travels around time and space.
He picks up Ferris companions along the way.
Normally humans sometimes robot dogs, sometimes aliens, sometimes humans from other planets.
And they go traveling around basically fixing stuff.
So it's really open-ended that they can go anywhere, do anything.
Now for those of you that haven't watched it, you're probably wondering how on earth you can get going for 40 years.
The main actor, the player's doctor, first of all, is William Hartnell.
And he played it for several years.
Then he got a bit old. He started forgetting his lines.
And they decided to replace him.
So they started looking around for someone else that looked similar to William Hartnell.
Sounded the same to try to replace him.
They then decided to screw it.
This guy's an alien.
Let's make him do something and change to be someone entirely different.
So they called it regeneration.
So the doctor regenerators when he died.
And cheated death.
And he regenerated into Patrick Chalton.
An entirely different person didn't look anything like, you know, he was like 20 years younger than the previous actor.
So an entirely different person, different personality, different everything.
And they've kept this up and they've now had 10 different people play the doctor.
Well, he left but will ignore the Peter Cushing film.
So we started off with William Hartnell, the first one.
The second one was Patrick Chalton.
The third one was John Pertree.
The fourth one was Tom Baker.
The fifth one was Peter Davidson.
The sixth one was Silveste McCoy.
The seventh one was...
Wait.
No, back up.
The fourth one was Tom Baker.
The fifth one was Peter Davidson.
The sixth one was Colin Baker.
The seventh one was Silveste McCoy.
The eighth one was Paul McGann.
The ninth one was Christopher Eccleston.
The tenth one was David Tennant.
Yeah, I'm a complete fan by here.
I can read to say you recite them off by heart, almost.
So they've all had different personalities.
The first one was a sort of grandfather,
a little crotty-ty kind of person.
The second one was known as the Galactic Hobo.
He enjoyed playing a piccolo.
The third one ended up chopped on earth.
It was a master of Venusian Akido,
apparently one of the very few two armed beings to actually master it.
The fourth one, floppy hat, big scarf, Tom Baker.
He was the doctor for many, many years,
and he is possibly the most famous one,
because he's the one that a lot of people remember growing up.
He was the one with the robot dog, by the way.
He told him off a bit, except for the longest time.
He then passed after Peter Davidson,
who was a quickter, very breathy, sort of character.
Oh, hello, I'm the doctor.
We're going to run over here.
Oh, cool stuff.
Yeah, you know one's a wooden earth, am I?
He would run around and run in,
and he was very breathy when he did his acting.
That was his doctor.
The next one was Colin Baker.
He was very smug for him,
and it seemed to know a fair bit about what was going on.
We have Silvestre McCoy,
Wanderbrand with Numbrella.
They all had their own outfits, you see.
The eighth one was Paul McGahn.
As I said, he played it in a film.
Didn't think a huge amount of the film.
It was a little too American,
if I can use that without annoying all the American people.
The dogs were very British,
and it was about British people and all that,
and then all the British actors.
And then to turn around and decide that you're going to
set it in American, have a bunch of Americans there,
and it didn't seem quite right.
They just did one bit.
They made a comment about the dogs became half-human.
He was half-human, half Gallifrein.
I was supposed to pure Gallifrein, then it was before.
After that, they then had a rather long hiatus.
This is in the 90s, they did the film, and that was it.
Then early 2003, I think it was,
they decided they were going to do a new series.
That came out with Christopher Eccleston,
and he was Northern accent.
He had leather jacket, and again,
a more not quite as outrageous outfit as the rest.
But as I said, he was from the North.
If you are an alien, how comes you sound like you're from the North?
Lots of planets have a North.
After him, they then had David Tennant,
who's the tenth and current doctor.
So that's basically the doctor's regenerations
or incarnations we've gone through those.
So let's talk about some of the bank guys.
There are three main ones,
the master, Dalek's,
Subman.
They're probably the three main ones.
So let's start with the Dalek's.
Exterminate!
That was basically their catchphrase.
They was threatened to exterminate people.
They were created as a soldier race
by a guy called Davros.
He was a maiden scientist for the Khaled race,
the Khaled Anagram of Dalek.
They're from Scarrow originally.
They were fighting the Thales.
They've been fighting them for thousands of years.
And long story short,
the Davros wanted to make the Daleks
at any cost so he betrayed his own people.
So the Falska attacks to say,
oh, look at that.
Let's get them back.
I've got the Daleks.
So he sends the Daleks off,
and then there's a sort of love-hate relationship
between the Daleks and their creator, Davros,
depending on which episode
and what's going on,
what series they either love or hate
and what there's two factions and various things.
They ended up going around in space,
trying to conquer everything,
and ended up fighting for power over time itself
with the time Lords.
And that was known as the Time War,
which was explained partly
in some of the more recent series
they haven't gone into the whole detail about that.
But there's not many time Lords
or Daleks around left.
But there's still a bit of wiggle room
that they can bring some back,
should they want to.
As I said, the Daleks were very big on exterminating.
And if you get several of the minimum together,
they can get a little antsy.
That's basically it on the Daleks,
at least for this brief overview,
after what I can't really get.
All the 40 years were for Doctor Who History
with all the books,
all the spin-offs and everything.
So I'm just going to do a brief overview here.
The next one is we have the Sidemen.
The Sidemen were originally from the twin planet
of Earth called Wondas,
which is the tenth planet,
although there's since been redone
in the new series to be an alternate Earth,
but basically the idea is that
they're possibly what we might become
maybe in the future.
The Sidemen are very ball-like.
They talk about becoming like us and very similar
to the ball, in fact.
And if you look at it,
there are lots of similarities.
Every citizen will receive a free upgrade.
You will become like us.
So as I said, very ball-like in certain ways.
And they do like killing people,
except of course being robots
and all digital is not killing people.
It is.
You will be deadly trapped.
Finally, we come up to the master,
as I said, the master is a time-lord,
except he is an evil time-lord.
He's permanently trying to take care of the galaxy,
whereas the doctor is trying to save the galaxy.
Another one of these ones that you can't have,
one without the other.
Now, haven't got any sound quates for this guy,
but if you really want to go and see some of the
who I would consider the true master,
you've got to go back to the John Pertwy area
and have a look at the Roger Delgado master.
He is my favourite version of the master,
has to be said.
And in the show notes, I'll come up with some good episodes
for you to watch if you want to enjoy that.
I'm going to quickly go over some of the other bad guys
that they have.
We have one episode where an alien spacecraft
re-created some weird Frankenstein-style monster,
so I've did maybe even more freaky
because it was a child,
and this episode in fact entirely freaked my wife out.
So if you're listening, honey, cover your ears now.
Please let me a man once down at the farm.
They've also had various other things.
We've had the ood,
and they turned into some weird
foot soldier for the beast.
And in fact, that was the bit that said
don't turn around to the very beginning.
The beast and his armies
shall rise from the pit to make war against God.
We are the Legion of the Beast,
and you will worship him.
We've also had clockwork bad guys.
And we've also had some really, really bad impressions.
This one was actually meant to be bad.
This Billy Piper and David Tennant,
David Tennant goes back into speaking
with his normal Scottish accent,
and then Billy Piper tries to pretend to be speaking
with a Scottish accent.
So that's about it.
That's been the brief overview of Doctor Who.
I've just got a few things left to say before I go.
First of all, the official site is www.bbc.co.uk slash Doctor Who.
You have a lot of stuff they can download commentaries
and listen to the commentaries whilst watching the program and things.
They also have a ton of sounds,
where I've got basically all these sounds from.
I should actually say the BBC have really got their head screwed on
when it comes to this whole web thing.
For example, they had one episode they went to this house.
They met Queen Victoria and a web wolf.
They actually made websites for the episodes.
So they have one episode they talk about,
who is Doctor Who rose in the episode.
Called Rose goes to see this guy.
He explains that he's been trying to track down the Doctor.
And they actually made the website and you can go and see the website.
And if you go to the Wikipedia page,
I'll put this in the show notes,
but you can go to the Wikipedia page on spin-off websites, I think it is.
And they have a list of every single one.
Basically every single episode they've got a website about it,
most of them.
The ones in the future they haven't, because it's in the future.
They have an episode about geocomptex.
And you can go and see the website about geocomptex.
You go and see lots and so it's really pretty cool.
They've got their head screwed on this.
And you can actually go and look at the websites and various things.
Okay, I've got to add this bit in.
I need to apologise.
I've got a bit of a call to if I sound weird, that's why.
But I just found out some stuff.
My episode will be coming out on Monday and on the Saturday two days before
the new series of Doctor Who was actually out.
So please go and watch it if you're in the UK.
You can grab it off the BBC iPlayer thing.
Not quite sure what else I could say about Doctor.
It's really fantastic.
Pretty much everyone in the UK loves it.
Everyone I know that likes science fiction even a little loves Doctor Who.
It's just, he doesn't have any guns.
He always walks around and he uses Sonic screwdriver,
which is a screwdriver that's Sonic oddly enough.
But he uses that.
He doesn't actually use any guns.
Most of the time there's a couple of his regenerations have.
But most of them don't use guns.
He doesn't go in all guns placing.
He thinks his way out of problems.
It's got funny bits in for the kids.
It's got jokes for the adults.
It's just the whole thing.
It's very funny.
It's very good.
I highly recommend you go and watch it.
Again, thank you very much for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I would just like to thank everyone for all the kind words.
I've had nothing but praise for my episodes.
And so I hope I'm going to do several more.
And I really am going to try and do the Linux one soon.
I promise.
Honest.
I'd like to thank everyone who does podcasts that I'd listen to.
People like Dave Yates.
Who've been nothing but supportive of me doing this.
Dan, I know I'll make fun of you a few times.
But thank you very much.
Chess Griffin.
Just like to say, you shall be sorely missed.
If you haven't heard Chess does a Linux reality podcast.
And he's stepping down so I'd like to give a quick shout out to him.
I'd like to thank everyone else at the Hacker Public Radio,
especially the other people that are submitting podcasts.
Thanks for listening to me.
This has been Zoke.
You can go to my website at zoke.org.
It's xray osca kiloeco.org.
Or you can email me at zokesorrygmail.com.
That's xray osca kiloeco Sierra osca Romeo uniform at gmail.com.
Thank you very much for listening.
Until next time, have a good day.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by tarot.net.
So head on over to CARO.18 for all of us in need.
Thanks for listening to me.
Thanks for listening to me.

131
hpr_transcripts/hpr0071.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
Episode: 71
Title: HPR0071: Beowulf Cluster Introduction
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0071/hpr0071.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:59:41
---
You
Hey, it's Steve Teak and welcome to Hacker Public Radio, episode 71 for Tuesday, April
8, 2008.
Today's topic is the Bay of Wolf Cluster.
You know, you can make a career out of certain kinds of computing, but I don't want to make
a mini-series out of this topic even though I could, so I plan to talk in terms of concepts,
so you can figure out what to do if you want to build one of these on your own.
Or by that I mean that I don't intend to do have a real handholding experience, I just
want to try to keep this as sure as I possibly can.
So let me draw for you a little roadmap in your mind's eye of where this kind of compute
cluster is and the scheme of cluster computing.
Basically, there are two broad categories of cluster computing, high availability and high
performance.
High availability is, for example, where there is an application that cannot go down and
so a cluster of computers is formed in such a way that if any computer fails, the other
computers in the cluster can carry out the work so the application stays up, although the
performance of the application can be affected.
The other category, high performance, is where the Bay of Wolf Cluster design fits into
place.
The Bay of Wolf is built for speed and more specifically for parallel processing.
I'm sure you know what a cluster is, there's a bunch of computers linked together to get
something done faster.
If the computers are linked together in any old, old way on a land, it is called a cow
design, which stands for cluster of network, oh, I'm sorry, cluster of workstations.
Some call it a now design, which stands for a network of workstations.
They're essentially the same thing.
But a Bay of Wolf is different and the biggest difference is in the topography of the land
it is on.
A Bay of Wolf has a head node and on a private network, which is to say a network dedicated
only to the Bay of Wolf cluster.
A bunch of other nodes, some call this the master and the bunch of slave nodes.
The head node sometimes has an additional network connection to the regular land, so people
can secure a shell into the cluster.
But all the slaves and the head have a non-commingled network.
This is the major difference between a plain old cluster and a Bay of Wolf.
There are two more criteria that set apart the Bay of Wolf type cluster, and the first
of those is that a Bay of Wolf cluster consists of Cots, C-O-T-S, which stands for commodity
off the shelf hardware.
Imagine calling up a retailer like Dell or Gateway and saying, hello, send me five of
your cheapest ATHLEAN64s.
That's the kind of concept we're talking about.
Now online and linked off the Bay of Wolf.org website is a book called Engineering a Bay
Wolf Style Compute Cluster by Robert Brown of Duke University.
He says it best, quote, the point of Bay of Wolfery has never been to glorify Lennox
per se, but rather explore building super computers out of the mass market electronic equivalent
of code hangers and chewing gum.
I love that quote.
The other major difference is that all the nodes run FOSS, F-O-S-S, or free open-source
software.
Some of these clusters can get to be in the hundreds of nodes, and the idea of either
paying license fees or not being able to fix something because closed-source systems
just don't let you get under the hood of the computer is an anathema to this form
of computing.
So what are these used for?
Well, many of them are in scientific and academic computing.
Things where physicists and astronomers have to run really big chains of calculations.
I'm talking about multi-day runs of calculations on many computers.
The closest thing we have to that kind of need is hackers is pre-computing the hashes of
all the passwords and a certain space of passwords or distributed cracking of a password protected
files.
I'm not talking black hats stuff here.
It is totally possible that a hacker may want to see the strength of a security scheme
by breaking it as a test to the system, or that a hacker may be employed by a law firm
to decrypt files under court order.
Personally, I had what can be called a status desire.
Now, I admit it, I like to have a muscle computer.
And what says muscle computer better than a Baywolf cluster?
You know, can you imagine, oh, I got a Dell, I got a Gateway, what do you got?
I got a two-note Baywolf cluster.
What?
You know, that kind of thing.
The thing is that I already own a muscle computer and I did not feel the need to actually
do this until recently.
I want to give Shouch to Klatu for his excellent HPR series on video encoding.
And now that I want to save my collection of Japanese anime in the original format, as
I got it in as well as the free Fiora format, I have the need for more computing power.
So that is my example.
And it does not even require you to be a nuclear physicist who want to do this.
Just be a film or anime buff and you can put this to good use.
Here is how I did it.
Once again, I would like to do this as a conceptual overview as I feel this episode is already
long enough.
So I'm going to move quickly.
Perhaps the feedback indicates a desire for detail on a certain point.
Maybe I will have the inspiration for another HPR episode.
Okay, I have an AMD 64 monster on the desk and a Pentium 4 laptop and I want to link
this as a bail of cluster.
I can always go for more notes later if need be.
Step one is hardware.
A separate LAN card and a crossover cable will do fine.
It's that simple.
After installing the LAN card, it was a matter of defining a second network.
So I had 192.168.1 whatever as my regular LAN, which is how I get out to the internet or
AVMO computer and I have 192.168.2 whatever as my second network.
So why a second network?
It should be an obvious question because I can just as well go into this to a regular network.
Well by closing off the slave computer to the head computer only, we can stop worrying
about security headaches.
Once my slave note came up, I installed plain old telnet server on it.
Normally SSH would be used, but encryption robs us of compute cycles, which I want to
use for the video encoding.
The second piece of software for this project was NFS, the Unish network file system.
Again, no worries about outside intrusion.
You define in the configuration files that you are only exporting file shares to the
second network.
That is all it took.
I then brought up the laptop, were on a script that wrote that brought up telnet and the
second network and telnet it into my laptop.
I used a tab X term and had one tab be my movies directory on my big desktop computer and
the other tab was the telnet session to the laptop, where I changed directory to the
exported file share that was my movies directory on my desktop.
In this way, I was able to run ffmpeg2theore on the same directory from two computers to my desktop.
Basically, the desktop is twice as fast as the laptop.
So now, in the time it takes to convert two enemies to ffmpeg2, I can convert three very
nice.
I might take another computer out of mothballs and go even faster, but that is a project
for another day.
So I am going to wrap it up now in the interest of keeping it short.
So thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Feedback is always appreciated at hpr at deepgeek.us.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
hpr is sponsored by caro.net.
So head on over to caro.nc for all diversity.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.

159
hpr_transcripts/hpr0072.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@
Episode: 72
Title: HPR0072: Imagemagick
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0072/hpr0072.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:01:13
---
I'm-
Hi neighbor, today Trolley Trolley is going to take us to the mystical world of image magic.
That's right, today we're going to talk about all the different incantations you can cast
on your friend's images, incantations.
It's a big word, do you see incantations?
She can't and now we'll go to the grand wizard himself, clap two.
Hi clap two.
This is hacker public radio.
This is clap two and I've been playing around with a lot of images lately.
For one reason or another it seems like I'm putting together images to send to someone
or I'm designing a logo for something and I have been using a little program that you may
or may not have called image magic.
It's i-m-a-g-e-m-a-g-i-c-k.
It's easy enough for you to get, you can have to get install image magic,
get it from your repo, download it from the website, it may even be cross-platform.
But either way it's a great little application that is essentially a command line centered image manipulation program.
Now that might seem a little bit strange.
One doesn't equate image manipulation necessarily with the command line.
But imagine this.
If you have a number of images and you need to scale them down so that you can upload them to a website or email them to someone.
Traditionally you might take it into the gimp and you might go into image size and scale it down and then you can save it out again as maybe a copy.
And then you can do that a couple of times.
And maybe you might even be like really creative and maybe you could come up with some kind of shell script to be able to do much of that work for you.
But with image magic you basically can just cut out the gimp entirely.
So if you have a folder of 300 images that you're trying to upload and you need thumbnail versions of each, this is the program for you.
The other cool thing about image magic is that you can integrate it with scripting languages like Pearl or Ruby, Python, C of course, C++.
You know all those good programming languages, you can use image magic, you can call that from those languages so that even on the server side for instance you could have image magic kind of doing something, you know someone uploads an image to your site and you need it to be automatically resized for them.
You need to change it in some way, maybe you're going to turn it black and white for them or something or maybe you want to give it rounded corners so that it kind of fits the style of your site.
You can do all of that kind of stuff with image magic with a simple, you know, a PHP script or something like that.
So it's a really powerful little program. It's also a little bit odd because image magic is actually the name of the package rather than the program that you're going to invoke from the command line.
There are about, I don't know about, about eight different programs in image magic. I think I've used pretty much all of them for one thing or another.
There's convert, identify, magraphy, composite, montage, compare, display, animate, import, and conjure. That's actually like 10 I think.
So convert is a lot of these do the same thing, but there's some kind of variation. So convert, for instance, will take your image and do whatever you want it to, but it does it to a copy. It outputs the file to a copy so you're not changing your original image.
That's handy for certain things, especially if you're going to do thumbnail versions of stuff. You obviously don't want to lose the full size quality. Identify will give you all kinds of information about an image.
Magraphy is just like convert, except it does it to the original image. So if you want to just take a whole bunch of pictures and scale them down and turn them black and white, you can do that with magraphy. You won't have any extra files lying around afterwards. It just changes the actual image.
Composite will, well, composite images, so it's like overlaying an image and messing with transparency and things like that. Montage will tile images. That one I have not used, actually. Compare, displays, an image or an image sequence, animate will animate an image sequence.
So if you want 30 pictures to play in quick succession, that would be animate. Import is basically a screen capture. And that's a cool one because you can actually use import. For instance, if you have no GUI up at all and you want to take a picture, a screenshot of the text console that you're running at that moment, import would be the way to do that.
And the last one that also I've not used is conjure. That is the interface for the scripting language that image magic uses, which I believe is called mith-m-i-f-f. And you would use conjure to do the kind of scripting that image magic allows you to do.
Obviously, you can always do your own. Like I say, it's completely compatible with all kinds of programming languages. So if you've got a Python script that you're writing and you want to do something with image magic, there's no need to learn image magic built in scripting language.
Okay, let's do some interesting image magic tricks. First thing we'll do is take a photo of a text console because how often have you been in a text console, and either you're having a problem because you can't get X to start or something like that, and you want to record what the problem is.
Or maybe you've done something really cool in programming class, and you don't have X up. You're just using a normal console. So what you can do is use the import command.
So again, import is part of image magic, and the way it would work is you'd put import, space, dash, display, space, colon, zero, dot, zero, space, dash, window, space, root, space, screenshot, dot, png.
And that will take a snapshot, a screenshot of the current display, the window that you're looking at, the root window, and name it screenshot dot png.
Now, if you wanted to do that without the command being on screen, the import command actually being on screen, then what you would have to do is switch over to another virtual terminal.
So if you're in virtual terminal one, you'd switch over to virtual terminal two, you'd log in, and then you'd do like a little bit of quick switching. You'd do like a CHVT space one, which would get you back to virtual terminal one.
So, semicolon, space, sleep, three, that'll give you a couple of, it'll give the terminal a couple of seconds to, you know, to pop back up.
So, semicolon, space, import, space, dash, display, colon, zero, dot, zero, dash, window, root, screenshot, dot, png.
And that would basically switch you over to the first term of virtual terminal, it would wait for it to draw itself on the screen, and then it would do the import command.
That's the way to take a screenshot without having this screenshot command in your screenshot.
Okay, so that's the import command. Let's think of sometimes maybe when we are going to actually be doing something within the GUI.
There are two times, or a couple of times I use image magic when I'm actually in a graphic environment.
One of those times is when, like I said, if I've got a lot of images that I need to juggle.
If it's 100 images or something like that that you need to do essentially the same thing to, image magic is the way to go.
Honestly, I tend to do Magrify, which is the one that changes the actual image, which I wouldn't think I would ever do because the risk is kind of strong that if you screw something up your original file is going to be gone.
But I guess I've never really done this to anything that important, so I just go ahead and use Magrify.
But you can certainly use Convert just as easily. A lot of these little programs and image magic use the same attributes or the same parameters.
It's just depending on how you want to apply the changes.
So if we're doing, like, if we need to rotate images and maybe we need to make them black and white and maybe we need to resize them.
You would just enter Magrify, space, dash, rotate, space, 90. That would be 90 degrees to the right, clockwise.
If you wanted to go 90 degrees to the left, you'd do minus 90.
Space, dash, color, space, all in word, space, gray, all in capital. That would change the color space to a gray scale color space.
And if you knew that you were sending images out to a proper printer, you could also change the color space to CMYK.
If you're going out to video, if these are still, you're going to put out the video, you could go to YUV. It just depends on what the purpose of your changes are.
And then you would do space, resize, 50%, space, images, asterisk.png.
And that would do all those things to everything called images with a number behind it.png.
And obviously you'd want to do that within the directory in which those images all dwell.
Now the really cool thing is that if it is like 100 images, obviously if you're going out to the web, you're going to have to figure that out yourself.
You know, upload it to your FTP, via FTP or server, and do whatever you want to do with it.
But what I've done in the past is had the need to go out to a PDF.
So I've scanned in like 100 images or 100 scans of camera logs or something like that.
And I need to get it consolidated so that the people who are going to be using these things don't need to open up 83 or 100 different images just to sort through what essentially is one document.
So image magic can do that as well.
And the command for that is convert, space, images, asterisk.png, space, all in one.pdf.
That's all one word, just all in one.pdf.
If you use that, it will invoke the convert command.
So it's not saving over anything.
It's not changing any original file.
And it's going to take anything called images with anything afterwards.png and make it into an all in one PDF file.
In the exact order that it appears in that directory.
So if you haven't named your images with some kind of logic to it, for instance, image 01, image 02, image 03, image 04, or better yet, image 001, 002, 003, then you're going to have a real interesting surprise.
But it's a lot easier to just name them properly in the first place and then just take them all and convert them to a PDF.
And I have Zoke in the IRC to thank for that.
He Googled it for me and found that command, which saved my life one night.
So that was really cool.
Let's see.
Other useful commands.
Well, there's animate.
A lot of people that I know with kids, they like to see slide shows of all their kids.
And the easiest way to do that, at least one easy way to do it.
I'm sure probably F spot and did you cam in all those applications, the CASA, whatever.
I'm sure that all does has some function for this.
But I don't use any of those programs.
So if someone wants to see images of a slide show of a collection of photos, maybe you just went on vacation.
You want to see all your vacation photos just kind of play on your screen.
The animate function is what you're looking for.
Animating is easy.
It's just basically either if you have an animated gift that you have separated into 29 different images or an animated sequence that you want to see in motion.
You can tell it to do that.
But if you just want to see like a slide show of pictures, all you do is you type in animate and space dash delay, space, say 500.
That would be five seconds on each image or 707 seconds, whatever.
SpaceAstrisk.png, and so now it's going to take every png in that folder, in that directory, and animate it in a little window.
Play it one after another in a little window for seven seconds each.
So that's pretty easy.
ImageVagantMagic is pretty easy, really.
There are a whole bunch of different options that you, if you want to do it to an image, then you probably can.
You just need to find out what property that is.
That can be a little bit overwhelming.
They don't have a proper man page as such.
If you just type in man, convert, or man, animate, or magnifier, whatever.
You see a very brief description of what the, of what the software, the application does.
But it doesn't give you all the options.
You get a little bit more detail if you just type in, for instance, magnify, space, dash, help, and that's one dash, not two.
It's just dash help.
That will give you a list on screen, and actually you'd probably want to pipe it into less.
It will give you a list on screen of all the different options.
But even then, it doesn't give you a whole lot of detail.
A better way is to simply go to a browser, whether it's Firefox, or Links, or Conquer, or whatever.
Just go to File, colon, slash, slash, slash, slash, that's three slashes.
USR, slash, share, slash, docs, slash, image magic, slash, www, slash, command, dash, line, dash, options.html.
That will give you all the different options that you could possibly want.
That's really the way that you kind of have to browse through it, because otherwise you don't get really as much detail as you need.
But it's a very powerful program, and there's just so much you can do without ever bothering to open up a graphic application.
You can watermark an image.
You can generate text.
You can add drop shadows. You can flip them, flop them, flatten them, extract information from them, magnify, invert, emboss.
You can give them labels, like metadata, rotate, just whatever you need to do.
It's a very, very powerful application.
If you're doing a lot of graphics, this could really save you a lot of time.
If you are doing art design for a fight or something, working with images, you might find it necessary to send PNG spec files to people.
A lot of people don't necessarily want or know what to do with a full-fledged SVG file.
Maybe you don't really have a good-looking SVG version of it yet.
Maybe you've reached the way I work with it.
Inkscape is all have like 20 different ideas on one file.
So it's not very convenient to send that entire scratch pad to the person who needs the art.
It's better to just make your selection and export just that selected area as a PNG.
And then you can convert that PNG to the proper size that you want.
You can add a background to it, whatever you want to do to it, with an image magic.
So image magic is a really great little tool.
You can use it if you want. Be aware of it anyway.
You know because you just never know when you're going to need some quick image manipulation.
There's just no reason to fire up an entire graphic app, just to resize an image by 50%.
So thanks for listening.
This has been Hacker Public Radio.
If you have questions, you can email me.
gort.clap2 at gmail.com.
If you want to be a part of Hacker Public Radio, then you can go to hackerpublicradio.org.
Email the administration of that site and they will contact you with show ideas or information on how to do a show.
If you have an idea for a show, it's very open.
And they're really nice there, so talk to them if you want to do an episode.
Image magic, HPR, great combination.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to CARO.ENC for all of her team.

54
hpr_transcripts/hpr0073.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
Episode: 73
Title: HPR0073: Google 411 Update
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0073/hpr0073.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:01:31
---
music
Everybody, this is Lunar. I'm back with an update. We're going to 7-11 now, and we're
going to have to the pay phone. We're not going to say where I went out to the pay phone.
I decided to check with Google 4-1, you know, that's around. I called, I was actually
outside using the pay phone, and I called to work to screw with my coworker one night.
Then I decided to check in on Bell's mind, and this is what I got for the call to go through.
Brandon Florida.
Brandon, come in Florida. Go back.
Go back.
You can also type in the five digits of code. What city in state?
Brandon, Florida.
Brandon, Florida. What business name? What category?
Bell's mind.
Bell's mind. If that's not right, take, go back.
Searching.
There was no direct match, but here are some related listings.
Number one, Bell's mind pbx and blurm on Bluff View Lane.
To select number one.
One.
Or snubber one, Bell's mind pbx and blurm.
On Bluff View Lane, I'll connect you, or say details, or go back.
Hold on.
My pbx.
To listen to Evan Doorbell, group bell recording.
Press month.
To listen to the radio freak episode archive.
You are sure it may be the only person in this conference.
As you can see, I can call 1-800-Google-411, Goog-411, and I can connect to the pbx.
I'm sorry, I'm just too happy right now.
So now you can connect to the conference from anywhere.
You can freak on phones.
You can talk to people wherever.
Startup conferences on the pbx again.
Guys, we really need to start up conferences.
You know, this brings in a whole new light, a whole new situation.
You can call people for free long distance.
Just have them call this 100 number.
You call the 100 number.
You meet in a conference.
Free fucking long distance.
Just keep this going, guys.
This is Lunar and I'm out.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O.N-C for all of her C-E.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.

8590
hpr_transcripts/hpr0074.txt Normal file
View File

File diff suppressed because it is too large Load Diff

46
hpr_transcripts/hpr0075.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
Episode: 75
Title: HPR0075: Collapsar
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0075/hpr0075.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:01:56
---
Let's go and see what I got for today.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is the MeroVinji coming to you today to discuss a little more virtualization.
In episode previous, I've discussed a few virtualization topics.
The most recent being it entails VT chipset.
Now the VT chipset being their virtualization technology chipset, which ultimately allows
for better utilization of the CPU to the VM, the virtual machine monitor.
Today we'll be taking a different look at virtualization with some research that came from Purdue University.
The title of the paper, particularly that I'm looking at, is Collapsar, a VM-based architecture for network attack detection center.
Now this is an article that I will be including a link for in the show notes.
So feel free to go and pick up a copy of this from site seer.
What they are looking at with this research in particular is creating a center, a system of computers,
in this case their VM-based computers, that sit off-site from your production network and will take bad packets and ultimately receive bad packets
that were to have been sent to your production network and instead trap them within their center for analysis and for understanding of the bad packets or of the nature of the bad packets.
Now this is done by three main functional components, which are the redirector, the front end, and the virtual honeypots.
Now the redirector's job is to, the redirector is a machine that sits on your production network and its job is to recognize bad packets as they enter your network.
Once the redirector becomes aware of the bad packet, it will then trap the packet and encapsulate it into a new packet which the redirector will send on to the front end of the Collapsar center.
Now once the front end receives this packet from the redirector, it will then look at the packet to understand what production network came from because it is possible that the Collapsar center is receiving traffic from multiple production networks.
So it will look at the packet to see what production network it came from, decapsulate the packet, and then will dispatch the packet to the intended virtual honeypots within the Collapsar center.
Now of course obviously I said the intended virtual honeypot. Now that bad packet was not intended for a honeypot, instead it was intended for a machine on your production network.
So what the Collapsar center will do with the, again the third functional component, the virtual honeypot is that the Collapsar center will generate a virtual honeypot that appears to be the original target machine.
Now there is of course a little bit of issue that can develop because it is possible that the virtual honeypot is a completely different operating system lying on it than the original or the intended target.
But the scalable nature of the Collapsar center would allow or could potentially allow for the virtualized honeypots to be any type of system, whether that be any, you know, some version of Linux, some versions of Windows and other operating systems.
So the potential is there that the Collapsar center could generate a honeypot that does mimic exactly the original target of the attack.
Now with the Collapsar center within itself, you know, there are other types of assurance modules, as they call them, which are basically like a logging module to keep logs of everything of all packets, you know, incoming all packets that attempt to go out outgoing because you could have the ability to block outgoing packets as well as maybe a targeting module,
an opening module, an correlation module, as well as, you know, other statistical modules and things like that.
In addition to the conceptual model for the Collapsar center presented in the paper, they actually have a case study involving three incidents, three separate incidents of compromises that occurred within the virtualized honeypot, virtualized honeypots within the Collapsar center.
The first virtualized honeypot was a Linux VMware honeypot that had a version of Apache server running on top of Red Hat 2.8, and ultimately the Apache service was compromised and researchers were able to examine that and understand how exactly that they did so.
The second attack was a Linux UML honeypot that involved a Samba server running on top of Red Hat 7.2 that became compromised.
The third virtualized honeypot in this case study was a Windows XP VMware honeypot, and this incident involved the RPC decom of vulnerability which ultimately led to this machine getting compromised with the MS blast worm and the Nazi worm.
Now these were three separate events that researchers were able to isolate and to look at and understand how each of these events occurred, but part of Collapsar includes the correlation module that allows each event to be correlated with the Collapsar logs and the network traffic
that was entering Collapsar from the different redirectors. So they were able to not only look at the computer itself and the inbound outbound connections for that computer, as well as all the files and everything that were compromised, but were able to even step away from the computer almost to the next hop, this case being the front end for the Collapsar center, and to look at all of the packets as they were coming in.
They were coming in to analyze them at that point and were able to ultimately were able to pull a lot of information from these three separate attacks.
Now all this research that is very interesting came out of Purdue, this article that I'm particularly looking at came out in 2004, so I'm sure that with any continued research that the Collapsar center at this point has only gotten better and stronger, and so I would definitely encourage people to, again, download this article, look at it.
If you're interested, maybe pursue any other research that Purdue University has released with regards to this.
Again, I would like to thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. If you have any questions for me particularly, you can usually find me in the Infanomicon IRC chat room, which can be found on the free note server, or you can email me directly at MiroVinji at gmail.com. Thanks again and have a wonderful day.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net, so head on over to caro.nc for all of us in need.
Thanks for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you very much.

36
hpr_transcripts/hpr0076.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
Episode: 76
Title: HPR0076: Tech Music: W1f1 Hax0r
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0076/hpr0076.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:02:04
---
Mom and father.
Mom!
Why?
Where than was Franklin Rice?
He died in English.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

96
hpr_transcripts/hpr0077.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
Episode: 77
Title: HPR0077: This old Hack Part 7
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0077/hpr0077.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:03:01
---
That's a missing part.
Okay, welcome to an unintended episode of this old hack with Adam.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'll see you in the next video, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye
bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye
excuse the background noise I've had a little technical difficulty here with my motor vehicle it seems that in the process of driving to work I blew the
upper radiator hose on the car in in the process I also backed it kind of down an embankment so I'm out here on the side of the road I'm trying to find right now I'm trying to find a spot to hook my tow straps
so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the car out of the ditch with the van and then I'm going to move the car
back and drive it a few feet over to the other side of the road where I've got a little more level to work
this shouldn't be a big deal the car is not that far off of the road it's really good
we've got a block in the road here but it shouldn't be a big deal
okay well I got the car out of the ditch which wasn't very difficult at all and I know it doesn't have any water right but I'm going to check the oil
to make sure it's got oil in it obviously I knew it had oil in it but I wanted to make sure that it didn't get hot enough to blow the head gasket
now the easiest way to tell if you throw that head gasket is if you check the oil instead of being black or brown
it is a milky color foamy kind of grayish bubbles in it maybe
that'll be a sign of the head gasket tomorrow so now I'm going to see the car start
okay we have starting and I'm just going to go turning around
it should run without water in for a minute or two before it gets so incredibly hot
so it seems to be the only problem that I had was it got hot and melted the thermostat
it got hot melted the radiator hose oh there's some underlying issue so I'm just going to pull off to a more level spot
here and since I didn't have to drive it too far I don't have to worry about the engine being too hot to work on
obviously I've brought my tools with me to remove the radiator hose which found my experience with doing color work here
is that it's usually best to take part with you before you go to the auto parts store
just in case they give you the wrong one
it used to be the radiator hose was easier to get to without requiring any special tools
but in this case there's some minor plastic trim that is in the way
I've done a few most of the repairs I think I've done like this abandoned on the road
in a parking lot somewhere at a Walmart gas station truck stop something like that
my wife and I spent a long time traveling around the country a couple years moving in a van
we had a 77 Dodge one tonne tradesman full-sized van and we only paid $400 for it
and we drove it back and forth across the country a few times
I think the most interesting repair I had to do we were in Wyoming
and I'm trying to think of the name of the town not Cheyenne I don't think
but it was some town in Wyoming and the only time I explained a little bit something about the van
the cars you can just open the hood and get at the equipment with mans you have to have a thing called a dog house
so a dog house is actually inside the van it sits between the front seats
and with older vans they're pretty easy to get up so it wasn't a big deal
what happened was just traveling I checked the oil every morning to make sure that it...
to make sure that the oil level was okay but the filler rod that goes into the motor
because you can't just open the hood and check the oil there has to be a long shoot since the motor's between the seats
there has to be a long tube for the dipstick to travel down to get to the motor to check the oil
so it's a longer dipstick because the motor's farther away from the front of the van
and the tube that holds it came loose from the motor which meant that I had to take the dog house off
in order to fix that well when I took the dog house off I noticed that the fuel line going into the carburetor
was broke almost in half and gasoline for some time had been leaking onto the carburetor
which is of course on top of the engine which could cause a large fire and or explosion
well lucky for me that we've noticed that problem before we had an explosion
lucky for us I happen to have a plunging kit normally it's not something you normally fix on the side of the road
pretty much what you do is you make a flare I guess it's called a flare tool
a flare on the metal hose and it fits into a fitting which makes it compressed down on to whatever you're attaching to
brake lines are kind of the same way I had to use it on brake lines and on the fuel line
well since I was at a gas station I didn't really have access to go find a new fuel line
and since we were kind of pan handling or way around anyway it would have been difficult to purchase
anything at the time so luckily for me there was enough extra fuel line there
enough play in the fuel line to where I could use my hacksaw I cut off the offensive section of the fuel line
and I used my flare kit to make a new flare and reattached it there in the parking lot
now this is one of the easiest repairs you can make on a vehicle even on a newer vehicle like this
you could easily just have a leather mount tool and you could have probably used that to remove the belt and install the new one
those clamps are either compression type where you have to pinch a clamp to remove it or they have a screw where they unscrew to loosen
this in this case I've got compression fittings
I've taken the old hose off I went to the park store purchased a new hose
which I am installing
that end in place don't know if I mentioned start with but it's always better to take the old part with you to the park store
you can match it up with the new part before you bring it back to the site especially if you're working on it
this is called a flare tool you make a flare on the metal hose and it fits into a fitting which makes it compress down on to whatever you're attaching to
I had to use it on brake lines and on the fuel line
well since I was at a gas station I didn't really have access to go find a new fuel line and since we were kind of pan handling or way around anyway it would have been difficult to purchase anything at the time
luckily for me there was enough extra fuel line there enough play in the fuel line to where I could use my hacksaw
I used my flare kit to make a new flare and reattached it there in the parking lot
hopefully this will fix the problem I don't know why it was overheating unless it was already low on water
the hose was in pretty bad shape the car got close to 200,000 miles on it's bottom radio hose isn't looking too spry I don't see any other serious issues
I checked the oil so I know it's going to oil it now put these two little things back on here
now we'll be putting water in the radiator well not just water
but you don't know anything about any trees then you might not live somewhere where it freezes but what happens is in the winter time
it gets particularly cold if you've just got straight water in your radiator and able to freeze and at the water freezes we can damage the engine
now also they add special lubricants to lubricate the cooling system in the canning freeze
so it's always best to use the recommended type of any freeze for your vehicle
there's a road coming here so in most places you can use a 50% and freeze 50% water mixture for colder climates I think they'll recommend using a heavier and freeze
there's also environmentally friendly air freeze which doesn't contain ethylene glycoil
ethylene glycoil is highly toxic and it's sweet to most pets so they won't drink it and die very person dead
everything seems pretty good so far temperature seems to be holding steady and we're going to take a little test drive up the road
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
it's kind of affecting the handling
small pressure, chip, battery charging, chip
I'm just going to drive the road here, turn around and go back to where the van is at and see I'm ready
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
go back to where the van is at and see I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready

363
hpr_transcripts/hpr0078.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,363 @@
Episode: 78
Title: HPR0078: Interview Tips
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0078/hpr0078.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:05:54
---
......
......
Hi, this is Ken Fallon and this is a very very different episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Tonight instead of talking about modems for the Lynx Professional Institute certification
exam, I'm going to instead talk about another topic largely because I don't want to talk
about modems because I hate the things I hate them under HPUX, I hate them under
the veil, I hate them under those two warp, I hate them under windows, I hate them under
Lynx, so I'm not a big fan of modems per se, so if there is anyone out there who is a
big fan of modems, I want to do the LPI certification exam section on modems, please please
please feel free to do one you have my blessing and I need if you want to do any other topics
feel free feel free to do so, and recording this on crappy mp3 player largely because I've
got a whole golf stuff in my head and I want to get it down in my modems as an episode
and if it does, I truly apologise for the crappy audio but I hope you forgive me, okay
the topic I want to talk to you about tonight as I walk home from Zoom pool is about job seeking
not so much job seeking as the interview process, what you can expect when you're going
to an interview, what you should and shouldn't do, so first of all let's assume that you've
gotten a job, I've gotten an interview for a position, now what normally happens is companies
will get a free space for a position and they'll have a budget in their head, the reason
I know this is I've been on both sides of the interview desk and have hired several
people, been on one to technical interview board where with several people who have been
hired so I have a fair idea what's going on both sides of the desk, this applies to
my experience and may your mileage may vary as they say, maybe different in other countries
and in my experience, this is Western European experience, what tends to happen is I at
least will go to somewhere like Monster Board, look for type in something like Linux for
instance, type in my location and select how far away I want to be and what's kind of
handy with Monster Board is they do an RSS feed so you can put that into your feed reader
and every day you get a list of new available positions, now this is something that probably
everybody should do anyway because I can open past people here and get very strange looks
but then here, this is something that you should do anyway to keep yourself up to speed
with what's going on in the market, what the going away for your position is, what potential
employers are looking for so it'll keep you eye open for what sort of training you should
be doing, what direction you want to take your career and so if you see a lot of companies
looking for Microsoft Exchange for instance, you might think that's something you'd like
to do, you might be able to get your employer to send you off on Microsoft Exchange course
or get the MSGN CDs and have a play with it, okay so what will typically happen up
with the Monster Board or one of these employment job seekers or whatever is they, the company
will have farmed out the job application to employment agency and the employment agency's
job is to sit there and basically weed through the crap and they will be getting somewhere
between 10 and 20% of your first year's salary, so whatever your salary is in the first
year, they will be getting 10 or 20% of that, now you don't have to pay that generally
your employer will, so this is from the point of view an employer hiring a person is
extremely extensive, the general trend in every company I've worked for recently has
been to try and lower the number of FTEs, full-time employees as much as they can, so you
got to bear in mind that when they do get a budget to hire somebody they really want
to make sure that they're hiring the best person, not just technically but they don't want
to hire a complete asshole who's going to come in and disrupt their team, they're looking
for somebody who will fit into their organization, now they've got one chance at this stick, especially
over here in Europe where employment you can't just fire somebody, you have to have reasons
three formal reasons in rising and then the union gets involved and bloody, but it's very
very difficult to get rid of people over here, so it's equally difficult to, it's equally
difficult to convince your employer, your potential employer that you're the right person
for the job, and you've got to understand from their point of view they don't, you know,
what they've got at stake, also whatever you guess in salary, whatever you earn they
will be paying double that, the general rule of thumb is whatever you earn in health benefits
in parallel social insurance, not all the rest of it in pensions, a lot of the good stuff
is about double what you're getting, so it can get extremely expensive hiring full-time
employees which is why the whole trend of outsourcing looks very good on paper at least.
Adieu, so you're going through Monster Board, you're going through your feed reader and
you see a nice position that you'd want to apply for, so the first thing you should do
is have a good CV, your CV, the last general rule, the structure of your CV, a CV for Americans
is a resume, your structure of your curriculum, vitaire, a resume, varies from country to country
and you should do your, I'll call it a CV, okay, you should do your CV to the style of
the country that you're in, the last school of thumb that it should only be two pages
long, but I think it should be as long as it needs to be. I've seen some very, very short
CVs which tends to be the thing in the States, keep it short and I've seen applications that
have gone to 18 pages or so. And you're going to realize that what's the normal rule of
when you're doing your curriculum vitaire is to have a story, and when you do an interview
as well, the thing to have is a story, you have education, you have training, you progress
into a job that was probably fairly crappy, you've got more training, you've got more experience,
you've moved on, you've moved on to the next thing and the reason you, and the should also
in your head for the interview reasons why you moved on to the next thing. Okay, so you've
got your education in there, in there and you've got your work experience in there, you've
got some courses in there. Now what's very good for the search engines and stuff is that
if you put in very hot topics, if you're looking down the list of jobs, the monster board
or whatever, and you see, they're looking for somebody with TCP, IP experience and somebody
with DNS and somebody with whatever. So you look for the buzzwords and you make sure that
they are in your CV, and that will help the search engines. When their employment agencies
have your CV on file, they'll go down there and search for those and your CV will come
up. Okay, so the next thing that will happen is you apply for the job and your cover letter
you'll say, I saw your interesting job, the subject should be the title of the job, ideally
with the job number so that they have a reference to it. And then it's a dear whoever it was.
And yeah, I'm walking in the middle of Heathers. You should reference the job by name. You should
then clean up. You should reference the job by name. You should say, dear sir, I read the application
for, I saw the advertisement for this position wherever you saw it so that they know who to pay
because they have to pay these boards or whatever. Very interesting position. I think I'm ideally
suited and very shorting why you're ideally suited to the position. If you'd like to contact me
about this, please find my CV attached and contact me on the following number. Make sure you have
the number in the body of the email so that if your CV gets lost, that they'll be able to contact
you again. Okay, so then if your resume looks okay or CV looks okay, what chances are they're
probably going to call you and they're going to give you a little bit of a, they're going to walk
through your CV and they're going to ask you where you want to work, where you wouldn't want to work,
the reason you're leaving your current job and all these sorts of things that you will typically
be asked in an interview so I'll get to that in a minute. Okay, so then they will say, oh, I have
this wonderful client who wants to bloody, bloody, bloody and you now think, okay, apply for that job.
So they go and they will ring up the company and they'll say, we've got this fantastic person
and then with Ali look you'll guess called for a first interview. Now they will get into the
meat of this show. The first interview, it's sort of important to know a little bit about the
company and what sort of dress you should do if you should have on. You can never be too far
wrong with visual business casual. Usually slacks, a pair of no runners or trainers, whatever you
call them, proper shoes, a pair of slacks, a shirt and a tie. Probably don't need a jacket,
but a coat or something. You need to be presentable and not too presentable, whatever you've got
a ponytail well combed hair take a bat. Make sure after shave or perfume not too strong. If you've got any
jewelry or piercings or whatever, I would say leave them in. Try and tone it down as much as you can
to studs, but you don't want to lose your personality either in this if you're going to a position.
And for a lot of IT positions, it doesn't actually matter what you look like. They seem to be very
flexible. However, you want to look at you put a bit of effort into coming out for the day.
Also try not to have any distinguishing marks or jewelry or big watches or
funny hats or things. Because the only thing you matter how good your CV is after that interview,
all that they will remember is, oh there's a guy with a funny hat or there's a guy with a big watch.
Okay, so try and be presentable. Make sure you know where the interview is.
Make sure I'll repeat that again. You know where it is. You know how to get there.
If you know how to get there and how long it's going to take, allow at least a minimum of 45
minutes beforehand to get into the area, into the neighborhood. Also bring the address,
the name of the contact person and the phone number of the person that you're going to be
having to interview with. And if you went through an agency, you also will need the phone number
and the name and the agency name of the person who arranged the interview for you.
The reason you need all this is if you are delayed, you know you're going to be delayed.
You ring up the company and you talk to the person if that's possible and you tell them,
I'm sorry, there's a, there's a whatever reason for the delay. I'm delayed.
I understand that if you want to postpone the interview, but that will be, you know, 15 minutes later,
whatever. Okay, so, see you arrive there. You should not enter the building.
You know try and go have a coffee. Go walk past the building and make sure you know where it is.
Go have a coffee or two or something. If you need a smoke, try and smoke before, so you're not
thinking of smoke going into the interview. Leave enough time between your last smoke before
you go into the interview. You should go in to the interview 15 minutes before you do to go in.
So if the interview was at 2 30, you should be there at 2 15. You go up to reception and say,
I'm here to see whoever you're here to see. They'll take a coat. I'm going to make you sit for a while.
You will have to wait there 15 minutes. Now, what I like to do in those 15 minutes is look around
and case the company out. Have a look at the chairs. You get a good feel for what the company is.
And at the end of the day, this is going to be a company that you're going to be working for,
for at least two to five years. You don't want to leave a company. It looks suspicious if you leave
a company before two years, unless you've got a very good reason, unless you're working contract.
I'm talking about permanent positions here now. If you're working in a position along with five
years, you're heading into the OE. He was very stale. You know, too long in the position is never
good too. It's okay if you move from one department to another department to another department,
but if you get into sort of 10, 15 years, you need to have a good story backing up why you stayed
and how you kept yourself refreshed in those positions. Okay, they will offer you a cup of tea
coffee. That's fine. You can accept those. There's no problem. You might also want to avail
of the toilet before you go into the interview and wash your hands. The person, so you've out
there reception or wherever and then the person who's going to interview will come, you'll stand up
and you give them a firm handshake, not too hard, not too soft, practice on a friend. Study handshake,
not with wet hands, sort of rub your hand on your clothes as you go off your hands or sweaty or
have a, if you're having a cup of tea, you have a tissue in your hand and just make sure your hand
doesn't clammy. And then they will bring you to an interview room and now you think they're all
allowed to get me or whatever. But what you have to think of is these people have been, are in the
middle of doing their work and their agenda has come up. Pop, I have this interview. Okay, we have
to drop everything we have to go out and check out this person. So you stand there, if your coat
is already at reception, you stand there and you wait for them to do whatever they need to do.
You do not sit down until you're offered a chair and then you sit down. Try it up to fidget,
get comfortable in the chair, be relaxed. We're probably also a few coffee, that's fine as well
because you're now going to be talking for an hour or so, so you need something to drink.
Okay, the interview will start and they will typically introduce themselves. I'm Joe Blog and I'm
John Doe and this company is whatever and the position is this. Usually they won't go too far into
what the position is so much because they're, they sort of want to social out and they don't want to
give you any clues as to what the position is going to be about. So they'll start off usually with,
tell us a little bit about yourself. Now, more than likely, the second person that's there,
the first person who's leading the interview will have read the CVs because he or she will have
gone down through the CVs during the selection period and a friend of mine who was very long
in the industry once told me that when times were tough they had a job opening and there was over
800 applications for the position. What he did was he took the pile of 800 applications and he
took the top half and threw it in the bin and when my friend says, what are you doing? He said,
well, you don't want somebody working for the company that's unlucky, do you?
So the selection might be for any reason, you just don't know. But you're in the door,
you've got your foot in the door now, what you got to do is sell yourself. What that means is you
don't tell other eyes, absolutely not, tell no lies. However, omitting the truth, omitting
turning a different life on certain things might be in your benefit. So say, we'll come to that
in a minute. So, be honest, if they ask you, well, let's start off with the first thing that they
will ask you is, can you go through your CV? Now, you will go through your CV and what I tend to do
is to do my education first. I started as a mechanical engineer and then I was, I got a bit
but computable, yeah, yeah, yeah, give them a story and then I went off to work for my first job
in wherever. Now, you have to look at them and see whether they're kind of okay with you continuing
on or whether they want to ask you some questions about your education. So, if they're okay with
you going on, you will go then and I was there and now here's the thing, when you're looking at
your CV, you got to have a story. Your whole life was leading up to this job, to job that they have
God in her many forms has destined for you to have. So, even if your first job, your flippinburg
is in McDonald's, you noticed that the cash register was whatever and you worked yourself up and
it was good experience because I was working with people and I learned a lot about management and how
time keeping and that's what forward and you know, first-rated employees came in and that helped
me later when I was working on the help desk in my second job. So, now you have and then you stop
talking there and you give them the bridge to get off your own comfortable first job onto your
second job and then your second job, you give a little two-minute little spiel about your second
job and then you have again and that's why I went to you know, I realized there that I was very good
at this and I wanted the opportunity to whatever. Now, you might you stop there because they may want
to ask you questions about particular jobs and if they do, you answer them and as best you can.
Try not to be negative about the company, it reflects very badly on you because
someday you will be leaving their company and you don't want them back, you don't want somebody
back stabbing you or your boss. So, you say, you know, I realized that you know, there were
a better suited heaven somebody who was a less experienced than me or we were quite happy to
you know see me go on and offer to my next position. But be nice about the company and say,
yeah, I finished all working with them and I'm still in contact in all the rest of it.
So, where are we now? So, you will continue on through your CV and the question will come up,
why do you want to leave your current job and it's okay to have a reason. You probably
better have a reason. Some of the reasons I've used in the past is I've met, yeah, I got married
and I've just moved over to this country. I love your country. So, that's one and other one is the
company has decided to change the focus of their business and you know, I would be fine on the
company but I want to leave on my own terms and I have discussed this with my boss and whoever
and they're happy with my decision. Okay, but here's the thing. You might not always be
happy to to your boss might not be happy with you leaving. So, it is also okay to say,
yeah, I feel, you know, I so I wasn't actually thinking of leaving until I saw your application
and it seems so suited to me. I thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up, you know,
how can anybody refuse your job if your brown nose and that much. Okay, so now comes to
the park. They're sitting on the other side and thinking this guy could be good or he may
just have listened to a podcast to figure out how to be good. And what they'll now do is try and see
if what you said on your CV actually matches. And this is where dude number two comes in typically.
Oh, by the way, you may have a HR person there as well. I actually won't, especially for,
I didn't interview one time with the semi-state body where there was actually 13 people, count them,
13 people in the room interviewed. It was not the head, somebody from the union there,
somebody from the management, somebody from headquarters, somebody from the canteen.
Honestly, anyway, so we prepared for that sort of thing, go and let us throw you. Also,
try and find out the gender of the people who are coming in the culture background if you can.
Ask your recruiter that, you know, so you are prepared for
I know when I was interviewing with my boss when we were interviewing together kind of,
some of the interviews coming in or just shocked that she was a woman and completely through
their interview. And yeah, you just can't hire somebody like that. Okay, moving on.
Now we get down to the, do you know your stuff? Questions. The whole point of this section
is to find out what your limits are. And they will start off something easy questions get
sequentially harder and harder and harder until you get to a point where you don't know the answer.
And the correct answer to that question is, sorry, I don't actually know that, but I'm guessing
it might be and give a good guess as to what the answer might be and also give you reasoning as
to why it might be. So if they're asking, I don't know about,
to a good example, I can't think of a good example. And if they're asking about how to flip burgers
and McDonald's, well, I've never actually flipped burgers, but I've seen people do it. And I think
this is how long it should be done. Because for the other guy across, it's important for them to know
that if they give, if you're given a task outside the CV and outside the interview arena,
so you come to work for them and you may have written on your CV that you can do this. And they
assume a level of knowledge that is in there, you will do more harm than good. So it's far
better for them to say to know what your levels are. And it's also important for them to know
that if you don't know something, you may come and ask them before you make a freaking hands of it.
So yeah, be sure and do that confidently. Okay. Which is also why when you put stuff in your CV,
make sure you know about it. And there's also no excuse for not knowing about it. Just get a book.
If you don't, if you can't afford a book, get download software via my images or whatever,
and play with whatever the technology is. And it's also cool to say, well, we didn't use this
technology in work, but I downloaded this and my test network and played with it for a while. They
absolutely really love that because that is you take an initiative and outside of paid hours,
you're working to better improve yourself. Okay, so that is that. I'm looking very much like a
weirdo here walking around the heat in the middle of the night talking into an MP3 player. But anyway,
we will continue. Where we now, it can go several places now. And the thing during the whole
interview is ideally what you might want to do if you've never done interviews before is have
set up a video camera and go in and have as somebody who has interviewed before to interview
in front of your video camera. And you will see that you're visiting and you're you're every time
you don't know like you've got nervous ticks. So you got to try and keep them under control.
Sitting down with your hands folded is fine. It's okay to use your hands slightly to give a
little bit of expression, but don't overdo it with your hands going all over the shop. Okay,
where are we now? Yeah, the technical questions might get a bit hairy, but again,
they might also ask you stuff where there's no right answer. They might ask you
now they will ask you other trick questions and you can search the internet for all
go of trick questions. If you're really hit your person, they will guarantee to ask it is.
First of all, what's your worst? What's your best quality? Well, my best quality is
a bad bad bad. Make sure you know what it is. Pick a best quality. That is your best quality and
and say it. What's your worst quality? Well, now what's your worst quality as well? I like to
freaking pick flow out of my navel in the middle of lunchtime. No wrong answer. You pick something
that is actually a good quality and you turn it so it's a bad quality. For instance, I like I get
sometimes so involved in my projects that I stay too long and work too long in it or sometimes
I get frustrated with people who are slacking off and then you must always qualify it, but I'm
trying to improve myself. So I found, so with the first example project management, I found that
I've done some project management course and I've found that I'm now slowly improving and
that I'm better able to. Well, project management is a bad one because everybody has to project
management, but okay, the other example about a team is say I never have a problem with somebody
who's willing to learn, but somebody who's just coming in day in day out with no motivation
brings down the motivation of the team and you have to try your best to keep the motivation of
the team up. And you're always a team player and a matter of what and you're always willing to
to work on your own if necessary. Okay, where do you see yourself in five years time?
You stupid question, I'm stupid, I'm disgusting in the whole world because any tech person knows
that in five years time, some radical new technology might have come out and completely
obliterated off the world, but resist the temptation to smack the person about their face
and sit down, come up with some good bullshit answer for that. I'm not going to give you one
because mine is patent pending. And usually I say I want to be a technical expert in my field is
pretty, pretty standard answer to that. So it's the third term going past. Yes,
where goes all the new gear list from Germany?
Anyway, where are we? Yes, stupid other questions you can be asked. Why would you want to work
for us? And that's a simple one, you go down to, you give the real answer to your real question,
that was about the CV, about the job application that they do want to apply for the job in the
first place. I am desperate is not a good answer. Things like you're well-known in the community
for being a good employer, see the position here seems exactly, it seems to match my skill level,
I'm looking forward to working, whatever's written there, you just give them the answer back.
There will be more HRA type questions. You really don't know what that can be, there's a trend now
to ask completely off the wall. If you were to meet the who in the world would you like to meet
most and why? Okay fine, try not to slap them about the face as I said before and just try to
come up with a reasonable answer. They will deliberately, they're just trying to know if you're going
to get panicked under under pressure, basically the red some HRA book and they're trying to impress
everybody else, but hey we all, when you get in the company you're never going to see HRA again
or hopefully you're not unless you do something stupid anyway, well that's a subject for another
podcast. Okay, where are we now? Now after that uncomfortable bit, you know, you should also
get a few for what they're, what they're, the people employing you are like, you should also try
for yourself. You know, to have a look around the office and then they will say, do you like,
do you have, right, that's fine and they'll probably go on to explain more about the job
and more about the company. They will if you have impressed them up until a point. This is where
the interview you can tell if the interview has gone well or gone badly. If it's gone well,
they will start telling you about the job and they'll probably give you a short spiel anyway,
even if you know in your heart hearts that you know everyone will employ you and then they're
just going to try and get you out of the building as quickly as possible. On the other hand,
if they really start explaining the job to you in detail and if you have questions about it,
now is the time to ask them like how many people are in the team, what's the, you know, if there's
something like, you do want to work support. You know, you don't mind working 24 hours support
and they haven't asked that. You say, is there 24 hours support? And they go, oh yeah,
do you mind working 24 hours support? No, enough to tell them my previous job. And that's a good
point for you. Or they'll say, no, you say, and they will probably go why and you make sure,
if you bring that up, you make sure to explain why that you don't mind.
And if they, if they like you, they will probably, if you're thinking about hiring it,
they'll probably bring you in to see the factory floor or whatever they're most proud of.
The computer room or I don't know, the server under the desk or meet the other people,
you know, quickly walk around the office. If they're likely, if they don't, they will give you a
call on them on the golf. And they will probably ask you about, do you have any questions?
The number one question you should never, ever, ever, ever ask is how much money is there on
this job? Do not ask that. There will be plenty of time in the second interview for all that.
You only answer that if they ask and you start off the answer to you, that question is, well,
I, this move for me is more about the position than that it's such an idealistic position.
However, I am currently earning this and I would expect to earn that. And you should know these
numbers beforehand going in. Don't bring them up in the first interview again to reiterate,
do not bring them up unless you've been asked to ask the question.
Now, the next thing is the finish up. You should have a few questions lined up. If you can't
think on your feet or if there was anything in the interview, if you're not sure whether it's a
good question or not, you should have a few two questions lined up about the job. Is there
much of that? Make sure that the questions are something that is going to be positive if they ask
you more questions about it. And you should then end off with, well, do you have anything else?
Well, just one other thing is, what is the next, what is the procedure if I'm lucky enough
to get invited for a second interview? What is the procedure? And then they will explain
that your blog will contact you blah, blah, blah. You will stand up. You will thank them for their
time. Shake the hand, the left scorch to the door and you go out. And you do not jump into the air.
You do know whatever. You're a steer in the interview until you get a kilometer away from
wherever it is. You should act exactly as you would be nice, calm and collected.
And then the first thing you should do is with, oh, by the way, your mobile phone off,
join in if you turn it off. Then what you should do is when you have the, when you're that far away,
you should pick up the phone and you should contact the employment agency and speak to them
and give them feedback on the interview how it went. Where there's some tricky questions,
who was in the interview and all that sort of thing. Anything else? That more or less will be the,
you should hear back pretty soon, all not, however long it takes. And then that should be
more or less it for the first interview. If you get called to a second interview, the same rules
apply, be there on time, make sure you have your mobile phone off, be dressed correctly. Second
interview can go anyway. It can be a very technical interview. It can be with a HR person.
It might even be, it might be just a walk around. Second interview is as much about,
this is much about them selling their company to you as it is about you wanting to work for them.
Because now they have shown their hand, they've shown that they're interested in you and
that you're not interested in. The case may be that for the second interview, there may be a
short list of people in which case you do need to continue selling yourself. The technical questions
might get harder. They might have thought of a lot of questions that they hadn't asked before.
So all of these things might come up in the other hand, you might walk in and it might be
walk around, meet the managing director, meet the lady in the canteen and don't underestimate those.
Because a lot of you, a lot of a lot of thought are considered to be
andcillary workers by most people are made in there since the company was founded and
no more about the company than then anyone else and maybe also asked about
to give the opinion of a candidate and I've known people who if the cleaner didn't
like the look of the person and they weren't hired. So anything else? I don't know,
if you are looking for a job and going for other positions, remain calm, don't panic.
One thing I've always noticed when you're looking around is if you have a look at the
the types of chairs in the mission room, if they're all matching and comfy and
honest chairs, then yeah, it's a company who's got a shit together. If there's one chair from one
type and another chair from another type, it might be a more dynamic company or they don't have
money or cash to spend on stuff. So yeah, probably questions that
questions that you may be allowed to ask would be you should discuss them with your interview
with the consultant job consultant before or after one second. Two seconds. Like for instance,
if they say, oh there's a great position because there's loads of greenhouse training and they're
very proud of that, well then you go, is there much training for this job? Okay, well that's my
episode of Hacker Public Radio. Again, if somebody has something about modems, not when modems
just analog, ordinary analog modems, can you please do an episode and send it in. Thank you very
much and have a nice day.

17
hpr_transcripts/hpr0079.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
Episode: 79
Title: HPR0079: Tech Music: PLA Radio
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0079/hpr0079.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:06:05
---
For more information on the project, please subscribe to get as soon as possible.
He's gonna call you and say cactus, off your business for what customer service he'd rather be.
Boy, you're both routine eye when you sleep at night.
He'd better use his red box tones, then put his cores in the local play phone.
He's the phone user that everybody knows.
RBCP on PLA radio.
When you've caller ID says cactus, you'll know.
Then it's RBCP on PLA radio.
RBCP on PLA radio.
PLA radio.

191
hpr_transcripts/hpr0080.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,191 @@
Episode: 80
Title: HPR0080: Coffee
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0080/hpr0080.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:08:07
---
This is Class 2 and I'm going to be talking about coffee.
Coffee is one of my favorite beverages and it's also a very classic beverage that accompanies computer hacking and coding and late-night artwork and things like that.
It's always better if you've got a good cup of coffee close at hand.
There are different stages of coffee making and you can jump in at any stage.
Obviously the most typical one that we're used to is you go out to the store, you buy the coffee off the shelf and bring it home and you make it in whatever fashion you wish to make it.
So right then you've already missed out on the roasting so you can certainly roast your own beans.
There are a little bit hard to find. I've not found them in stores at all in any city that I've lived.
But what you can do is find them online and the advantage of buying them unroasted in their raw form is that you're not losing any of the essence of the coffee bean.
Because once it's been roasted the oils of the bean start to leak out of the bean and so you're kind of losing the purity of the coffee out of that way.
Most of us aren't ever going to notice that because we're so acclimated to the taste of coffee that has been sitting around even in vacuum packed containers.
I guess a purist would say that you'd need to roast it yourself to get the most flavor out of it.
So if you do that you're going to get some really good coffee as long as you know what you're doing roasting them.
And it's just a matter of practice. So what you'll do is you'll buy the beans.
Lots of different varieties of coffee. You're going to see different ones advertised. There's Kona Coffee from Hawaii.
Blue Mountain from Jamaica. I like Sawtooth Mountain which is I buy it in Southern California. I don't know where it's from but it's very good.
Lots of different kinds. You want to make sure if you're buying the raw coffee beans you're probably getting a pure...
You're getting just that kind of coffee that you are looking for.
Not so much if you're getting it in a container even if it's on ground. Although usually if it's on ground you're actually usually getting it.
But sometimes you'll see in containers you'll see it being advertised in big print as Kona or something.
And then once you get it home and you look at the fine print and you realize it was a blend of some cheaper coffees along with the nicer coffee.
So if you're getting the raw stuff you're usually... you can usually rest assured that you're actually getting what you think you're buying which is nice.
So you take the beans home or you get them delivered whenever and you'll want to roast them some way.
Now there are professional roasters out there but from what I've seen of these roasters they're very large, unwieldy. I think they're meant primarily for large batches of beans.
Not really something that you'd have in your apartment. Maybe if you have a large house and you're really dedicated you would have one of these.
Typically the ones I've seen at least are very... they're pretty hefty pieces of machinery.
Second to this would be perhaps a skillet and a gas stove. You probably need gas because you're going to need to get this really, really hot.
You take your skillet and you put it on the gas stove, heat it up to about 500 degrees and if you want to be precise you can get an oven thermometer and throw that in the skillet and see what happens.
Eventually you'll reach a very, very high heat. Like I say especially on a gas stove you can reach that kind of heat. I don't know if you can do that on an electric stove at all.
So you've got your skillet. You throw some beans in there. Not too much. You just kind of want to cover the surface of the skillet and you want to keep the beans moving. You don't want to scald or scorch rather the one side of the beans.
What you want to do is you get them evenly heated up. They're going to start smoking first of all. If you've got a very sensitive fire alarm anywhere near your kitchen you want to have your exhaust fan on.
But you'll want to keep them moving and they're going to start smoking and you'll start to hear them kind of pop and crack a little bit.
What's happening is that the moisture from the bean is evaporating and at the same time of course the bean is getting very, very hot and it's cooking.
So you'll keep them moving and eventually they'll, at first the smoke, the fragrance is going to be fairly, it'll be kind of fresh like what you'd expect out of a green berry or a green bean.
But what you'll eventually get to is a more cooked smell.
At that point the beans will start to get darker and they'll start to take on the appearance, the more traditional appearance of what you're used to of a coffee bean.
Now, once you start seeing them look traditionally like a bean you'll want to take them off of the fire eventually.
When you want to do that is up to you whether you want the traditional dark roast or a lighter roast or whatever you want.
And you kind of have to play it by sight, you just kind of have to get a feel for it. You also have to know what you like.
You also have to keep in mind that coffee beans or anything that you're cooking.
You might take them off the fire but there's still a lot of residual heat so they're going to essentially continue to cook.
Some people will try to blanch the coffee beans by pouring water over them to try to stop them from cooking after they're off the fire.
But you don't really want to do that because if you do that you're basically making coffee before you are making coffee.
You want to save the water for when you want to drink it. You don't want to use water to cease it from cooking.
So the idea would be to take it off of the fire a little bit before you really want to take it off the fire and let it residual cook perhaps in a colander or some kind of bowl preferably a colander so that there's a good air flow.
And kind of shake it a couple of times not too rigorously but you just want to make sure that they're kind of evenly distributing heat.
And once you feel that they've gotten off most of the heat you can place it into whatever container you're going to put it into.
Probably you're not going to grind them all and make them right now because you would want to do that every time you make a cup of coffee.
So you're probably hopefully cooking more than you'll need immediately.
There's a big debate over whether you should store your beans, your roasted beans in a refrigerator or a freezer or not.
I've heard that you should not because once you take it out of the freezer then it starts to I guess there's condensation and that causes the oils to leak and then you're losing purity of the coffee.
I still put mine in the freezer but a lot of people will put it just in a cool dark place and that's fine whatever you think is best for your coffee workflow.
So you store the beans and then they are ready to be ground.
Now grinding coffee is very much related to how you intend to make the coffee.
So you'll see that supermarket if you've bought the whole beans you'll see a coffee grinder somewhere usually so that you can grind it before you go home which kind of defeats the purpose of buying the whole beans.
So it's better if you're going to do the whole you're not going to roast it yourself you're going to buy it from the supermarket but as a whole bean first of all make sure it's vacuum packed.
Most whole beans will be vacuum packed and second of all do not grind them at the store if at all possible.
It would be better just to buy your own coffee grinder and these are very inexpensive they don't need to be fancy.
You can find them they'll also be sometimes referred to as spice grinders but usually they're just coffee grinders and it's just a simple little grinding device that you'll place in beans into usually enough for a cup or two of coffee and you grind the beans.
There are very very fine grinds which will be good for a more delicate flavor and there are rougher or harsher grinds which are going to be a little bit more rustic robust flavor.
Now depending on how you're going to cook them this is how you're going to want to grind them so the different ways to make a cup of coffee would be with a traditional drip maker coffee maker like a Mr. Coffee or whatever you buy it any department store.
These are crude machines that give you no control over the heat of the water or really you know anything and usually the intention is to make like eight cups of coffee at a time which encourages you to keep the pot on the hot plate of the coffee maker which evaporates water and ends up making the final cup of coffee that you pour out of that taste terrible.
It's just a really crude way to make a cup of coffee but you know that's what we a lot of us have and so it's fairly common.
If you have to use one of these I would advise not making too many cups of coffee at once unless you know that people are going to drink it right away.
Just because you can make eight cups of coffee at a time does not mean you should make two or four whatever you think you're going to be able to drink right away and then for your next couple of cups you know start a new batch.
So drip coffee makers you have a lot of flexibility their paper filters usually so you can use a fine grind or a rough grind it doesn't really or anywhere in between it doesn't matter because the grinds aren't going to get through that piece of paper probably.
You're not going to end up with grinds in your coffee so you want to throw in your coffee grinds and water and usually I think the the the rule of thumb is like a tablespoon every six ounces of water.
I think anyone who's made any amount of cup of coffee just kind of knows how much coffee to put in so that's not doesn't seem that big of a deal obviously you have to kind of you have to know your coffee.
I mean if it's a strong strong coffee maybe you're going to want to go last week coffee maybe a little bit more so you know that's just something that you'll get to hang up.
Pop it in there put the water in and it takes the water up to whatever however close to boiling it thinks it should go and then it drips through the filter and you've got a cup of coffee.
Similar to this is a manual drip which are it's basically a funnel and you place a paper filter in this funnel.
Place the funnel on top of your mug put the grinds in the the filter and pour you heat your water up separately.
So now you've got control over the heat of your water so if you know you need a boiling cup you can have boiling boiling water.
If you know you don't need it quite boiling and the heat of the water is going to affect the way that the cream reacts if you're going to put cream in the coffee so that is something to be aware of.
So you have a little bit more control over the water temperature with a manual drip which is nice and the advantage to a manual drip again is that you can go anywhere from fine fine grind to very coarse grind.
If coarse grind doesn't really matter it's a paper filter chances of grinds getting through that are very slim.
So that's that's what I've been using lately and they're kind of nice as well.
I've seen them by the name by the brand name Malita M-E-L-L-I-T-A maybe and they're really small as like I say it's like a plastic funnel basically and some paper filters and that's all you need.
So you don't have to put up with the big coffee maker you know and it also kind of forces you to make just enough for you to drink at that moment so that you're not leaving your coffee on a hot plate that is then making your coffee stale and gross.
So that's manual drip that's nice.
Something similar to that are the so-called French presses. I've also seen them called Australian presses basically any exotic location name press.
So if you see these these are a pitcher usually a glass pitcher with a wire mesh and a handle.
So the idea is to put the coffee grinds in the the coffee grounds in the pitcher pour the water in again you have control over the heat of the water yourself.
Pour the water in and then let it brew for a little while and then you press the wire mesh down there by forcing the grinds to the bottom of the pitcher.
This is quite nice. It's a nice method I use it for a while but they tend to always break on me. I think the heat and the pressure just gets to be too much for glass pitchers so that's been kind of a disadvantage.
Another disadvantage is that the wire mesh has openings obviously for the water to get through but it has to be a certain size you know so you're really kind of restricted in the kind of grind that you can pour in there.
If you put something too thin it's just going to get right through the wire mesh and you're going to end up with a lot of coffee grounds in your cup.
So you're kind of you're restricted to a course or grind and take that for what it's worth.
The other option of course is an espresso maker and if you've never had an espresso maker you should definitely get one. These are great.
They're not that large and they're not that expensive. Consumer kitchen brands sell them you know black and decker that kind of company they sell these things so you can get them for good prices.
The idea behind espresso is pressure. You place the water in the tank, you screw the cap on really solid it'll be a heavy duty cap because it's going to generate a lot of pressure
and it's going to make sure that the cap isn't blowing off and steam burning your face and you'll have an espresso filter that latches on again very securely because there's a lot of pressure and as an extension off of that there'll be a nozzle for steam for your milk, for steaming milk, foaming it.
So what you do here is you have a metal filter for the espresso and the espresso again it's not a paper filter it's a metal filter so it has holes in it.
So two fine of a grind will be a problem because it'll get through those little holes but usually the holes are small enough such that you can get a fairly fine grind all the way up to.
I don't think you want to go up to too much of a coarse grind but somewhere in between you could definitely go and it'll be fine.
Again the amount of coffee just depends on how strong of an espresso you want and how strong of a coffee roast you have placed in.
So the water will boil and begin to steam and it will start to push out through the espresso beans.
It's a beautiful way to make a cup of coffee and it's very very very flexible because once you have the espresso you can do anything with it.
You don't have to drink it as an espresso obviously you can make it into a cappuccino, you can add water to it, somehow water to it, make it into a cafe Americano, you can make it into a latte, you can do whatever you want to.
So you'll see the espresso is starting to pour into the pot.
At that point you can turn your attention to steaming the milk if you want the steamed milk.
You'll want to use whole milk or half and half. I usually go for half and half simply because you need the amount of cream to really foam.
If it's something like 2% milk or skim milk there's not really enough milk there to make a proper foam.
So if you're going for foam use either whole or half and half. I go for half and half.
So you'll have half and half in a little picture and you'll want to make sure that the steam nozzle is submerged into the milk first.
You do not want to start the steam nozzle going and then try to put it into the milk.
The steam will blow the milk everywhere so you want to make sure that it is submerged first that's very important.
Then you turn the steam on and do it slowly. You don't want to just blast it right away.
The steam is really pressurized and it will completely, it will blow milk everywhere if you're not careful.
So you just want to turn it on slowly, get a feel for how it's steaming.
You want to start at the bottom of the picture typically and move it up and down toward the top of the milk.
You want to make sure that you're kind of moving it around because you don't want it to just steam one area of the milk.
Because literally you can end up with milk that's really, really hot in places and then cold in other places if you do it sloppy.
So you want to just kind of get it all around the milk and then for the foam you're going to concentrate on the very top of the milk.
And that's the trick. You don't want to obviously get the steam nozzle out of the milk or it will go everywhere but you want to get it right up at the top so that it's really steaming the milk and that that steamed milk has a place to kind of settle which is at the top.
But it's something that you can get used to and it takes some practice but it will work out and you will kind of get the feel for it.
So at this point at the end of it all you will have one picture of foamed milk, one pot of espresso.
And you can go anywhere with that like I say. If you want espresso, down the shot and make your next cup.
You want some cappuccino, pour the espresso into a cup, pour the milk in and you've got a cappuccino.
You want latte, pour the coffee in, pour some hot water in and then pour the milk in. You've got a latte.
You want a cappuccino. Those are simple, you have espresso, you pour that into a mug and then you take some boiling water and pour that in.
So now you've got what essentially will sort of taste like what came out of a coffee drip, a traditional drip.
But it will have that kind of richness and strength of an espresso. It's really, really good.
So you've got a lot of choices there. You've got a lot of control over the grind. You've got a lot of flexibility within espresso.
It's a little bit like compiling a custom kernel. You can really kind of decide what goes into it, how it's going to be for you.
You definitely have to do it. If you haven't done it, you should really try a couple of times to make your own, your own espresso or cappuccino.
Other forms of making coffee include those little instant, they're like tea bags, but they're coffee bags.
So they're in a filter and they're closed. So you can kind of dip them into hot water and kind of create a cup of coffee.
In my experience, it hasn't really tasted that great, but it's good and a pinch and it's certainly better than the final sort of coffee that we should at least acknowledge.
Instant coffee stay away from it. It's not coffee.
Now, after you've made your coffee, whatever kind of coffee you've made, you may want to add cream to it.
So obviously, if you've done this steamed milk thing, you're kind of good to go.
But when you're adding cream to coffee, you want to make sure that you're adding cream to coffee, not coffee to cream.
You add coffee to cream, you're risking scalding the cream in a natural way.
And depending on the heat of the coffee, you may even be risking damaging the cream if you're adding the cream to the coffee.
So what you'll want to do, if you know that you've boiled the water to a true boiling point, and you've just put it into the mug, either wait for it to cool a little bit before adding the cream, or keep stirring it while you're adding the cream.
Because otherwise, the cream will form a skin on top and it will be kind of not pleasant.
So you want to make sure that you are aware of the heat factor before you just go dumping the cream in.
And remember that presentation is everything.
If you're entertaining a lady for the evening, and you guys decide to have a cup of coffee, and you're like, oh, let's not go to a coffee store, I will make you a cup of coffee myself.
You want to impress her, right?
So you're not going to just go in and make a cup of coffee and bring it out in the same mug that you use when you're coding.
You want to make it look good. You want to impress this person. So you should think about garnish.
The coffee, if you've made it correctly, is going to taste good anyway, but that's not really enough to sell the cup of coffee.
You need to put some kind of additional touch on it.
And whether it's after you've made a cappuccino, you want to drizzle just a little bit of espresso on the top just to kind of give that nice little, like a Debian Linux logo in the foam to milk.
You could do that. That could be a good conversation starter.
Or you could also sprinkle some chocolate on the top.
The best way to do this is just to get a really, really fine cheese grater. So this isn't the kind of cheese grater that you find people using for pizza and things like that.
This is the cheese grater that you're going to be using for a hard cheese, like Parmesan or something like that.
You want really, really fine, finely graded slots in the grater.
And you can just take like a special dark, like a piece of special dark chocolate.
You can just grate that right over the top of the foam, sprinkle some chocolate onto it. That'll impress her to no end.
Or if you don't have any special dark, you can even use like Bakers Chocolate or a chocolate chip. It doesn't matter.
It's just a nice little touch and it adds a little tiny bit of flavor. Not too much flavor. It's really for looks. It's for presentation.
If you're in a pinch, you can also do a little bit of cinnamon. Make sure that she likes cinnamon first. But that's always good.
It's just something on the top to add to the presentation. Or you can take a strawberry, cut it, cut a split down the center of the strawberry and kind of hang that off the side.
Whatever it takes to make it look like a real work of art rather than just a functional cup of coffee.
So those are the different ways to make coffee. Those are the different factors that you should think about.
Few people know that the Western world knows coffee, you know, as what we kind of think of when we think of coffee.
There's a whole other world of coffee in the Far East called Turkish Coffee or Greek Coffee. This is great stuff if you can find it.
If you go up to a story of Queen's, if you're in the New York area, I'm sure there are other places that this is where I know to get it.
You can go to any Greek market and buy some coffee. This is very powdery coffee. I mean beyond a fine grind. This is literally like powder.
And to prepare this properly, you take a saucepan rather than a skillet. You'll take a saucepan.
You'll put, I don't remember, like maybe two or three tablespoons of this powdered coffee and just put a lot of sugar in it.
That's the way I was taught to make it. I don't know if everyone does it that way or not, but you put a lot of sugar into it.
And pour some water in there and boil it. And eventually it'll kind of, it'll start to boil and do really strange things.
And right when it starts to boil, you'll want to take it and you'll want to pour it into a cup.
You'll need to let it settle because the coffee grinds, if you've been picturing this, we've just poured water in with the coffee.
You know, so you need to let all that powdered coffee settle to the bottom. And then you down it, you just, you drink it.
You can sip it, you can, whatever you want to do. It's really, really good coffee. The bottom will be mud, just a lot of powder.
But it's a great way to have some really, really good coffee. If you haven't had that, you should definitely try it.
Astoria Queens or probably any, like I say, Turkish or Greek and possibly Arabic. That's kind of the name for that kind of coffee.
And yeah, if you haven't had that, you should definitely try it.
Not necessarily something you're going to want to hit on the ladies because you're trying to impress them.
You're trying to, you know, keep them comfortable unless they're really adventurous. You don't want to probably bring that out on the first date.
That would be more of like a, you know, third or fourth date kind of coffee.
So, but it's definitely good, definitely good for the late nights hacking sessions. So go for that.
So coffee making, yeah, it's fun. It's cool. You have to just kind of get into it. Don't be afraid of it.
It's exciting, a little bit dangerous, but you can get into it and become a real master of coffee preparation.
It's an ancient art from the monasteries of the Capuchin monks. This is a time-honored tradition. So get into it and enjoy some serious coffee.
Thank you for listening to Half the Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by caro.net. So head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of our community.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.

178
hpr_transcripts/hpr0081.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,178 @@
Episode: 81
Title: HPR0081: Linux Boot Process Part 3 - Boot Prompt Parameters
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0081/hpr0081.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:09:30
---
This is the important factor for crafting art.
Well, they're fighting for air, when it's all ready then, we stretch our necks to
stand, but they're too quick to combat, hold the body for ransom, cause the mind is a billionaire.
Hey, this is Dan, that one in a hacker public radio, a little late, no excuses, I'm lame,
but anyway, today we're going to talk about boot prompt parameters, stuff you can pass
in a kernel through a boot prompt, and before we do that, let's take a quick review of what
we talked about already regarding boot loaders, which would be primarily the way that you would
pass information to the kernel upon boot. So we talked about in the past two major main
boot loaders, one was Grub, and the other was Lylello, and of course Grub is the boot
loader of the gods, we all remember that from my previous episode. Now, Lylello and Grub both
get installed typically into the master boot record or into the boot or root of your
boot portion of your file system, your partition, whatever you want to make bootable again, it
could be a separate boot partition or it could be just your root partition and it installs
itself into the first 512 bytes right there of that partition. Now, if you're going to
install Lylello or Grub into a partition as opposed to the master boot record, you are
going to need another boot loader and a master boot record that could initiate the boot
loading process from that said partition to kick in Lylello or Grub at that point in Grub
terms is called chain loading, which you could chain load and allow you to kick into the
boot partition and you'll be golden and good to go. Anyway, Grub, Lylello, again the deficiencies
between from Lylello compared to Grub is that you have to be careful to initialize Lylello
anytime you make a change and that's going to also be important that if you want any of
your boot parameters that you save in your Lylello.com file to take effect, you're going
to have to rerun Lylello after you edit your Lylello.com. The Grub menu. LST file, you
will not have to edit or re-initialize Grub after you edit it automatically pulls it up.
It's not a problem. So that's another win for Grub right there. Now, let's talk about
boot parameters and what you would actually use boot parameters for. Boot parameters,
there are basically two types. One either gets passed to the kernel or it gets passed
to a driver or a module. Now, let's not call it a module at this point. Let's call it
a driver because when I think of modules, I think of modules that are not compiled into
the kernel but are separate and get called during the boot up process or you call them
manually later on down the line. Anyway, you can't pass parameters where you don't pass
parameters to modules so to speak that are not compiled into kernel. You only pass those
to drivers or modules that are compiled into the kernel. So you pass boot parameters
to the kernel, to the driver that's compiled into the kernel. You can also pass information
to the in-it process or to change the in-it process. Again, the boot prompt allows you
to pass this information. If you're passing it to a driver, you're going to specify just
like any other boot parameter. We've already looked at some boot parameters to begin with
when we talked about the different image settings, particularly for Linux and Lilo and
Grub. One of those was the RO for Read Only. One of them was root equals for specifying
the root device and there's other parameters like no ACPI and a few other things. You
could pass in-it equals to change the in-it program that runs instead of running the in-it application.
You could change it to bin.sh and we'll cover that in just a minute. Now, when you are going
to specify a boot prompt parameter, a couple of guidelines you need to follow. One, there
are no spaces in the argument. It's going to be RO for Read Only or in-it equals slash
s bin slash in-it. There would be no spaces. It would be just all one line. You do not
put any spaces inside each argument that you pass. Every argument must be separated by
a comma. You don't need to pass spaces in-between those. It would be in-it equals slash s bin slash
in-it comma root equals slash dev slash HDA. There would be no spaces at all in-between
there. You don't want to put any spaces in there. Now, you can, well, we'll cover this
in a minute. Anyway, each argument can accept up to 10 integers, integer arguments, or
you know, 10 different values plus one string. So just be aware of that. I really don't
see anybody ever getting to the point of reading more than 10 integers for each argument.
So, sequently, if you need more than 10, you could just, you know, recall that same argument
with the rest of the integers or primers that you want to add. So, you know, you probably
never ever need to use more than 10. Okay, so how are parameters sorted? Now, there,
of course, we talked about their stuff that goes to the kernel, their stuff that can go to
a driver, their stuff that you could pass to the boot time that changed something like
in-it, what gets run at boot time. So basically, the way it does is it processes the parameters
and it looks for a special command. Some of those special commands include specifying
rather than rather to mount the root file system, start the first mount to be root rewrite
or read only, or whether we are passing a root file, you know, saying the root partition
is this, that's a special command. That gets processed first. If it's not a special
command, it looks to see if it's a setup for a device or the kernel specifically. If it
finds it's something like no ACPI, so it doesn't initialize, I'm sorry, if you were passing
like back in the day when I was creating a router off of 486, I had two network cards in
there. And to specify which network card I wanted to be, the ETH0 device or ETH1, as
I believe these were ISA cards, I had the pass to them, the IO address and the IRQ address
right off the bat, so it would be like IO equals 0x 110. And I think it was interrupt equals
whatever the values were for that card, so that it would assign via the module that was compiled
into the kernel, it would assign the device that matches that to ETH0, so that was kind of passing
a parameter off to a module. If it's not something for the kernel or the module, it checks
to see if it's an environmental value variable in the form of something equals something.
And if that's not the case, it passes whatever's left to the init application.
For instance, if you were to type in the name of your kernel and single or specify it in
it run level of 1, 2, or 3, that 1, 2, or 3, we get passed directly to the kernel.
Now remember, something like init equals slash bin slash SH would be an environmental
variable being passed, so it wouldn't run. That would be like on a third step.
It wouldn't necessarily pass that information in it because it wouldn't run in it.
So there's just to be aware of that.
Now, once you get the system up and booted, you could actually check what boot parameters
were passed to the kernel and everything to your system by looking in the directory,
looking in the PROC directory at a file called CMDLINE command line.
That will show you the boot parameters passed to the kernel at boot up time.
Now, along my triple EPC right now, and if I go and look at my, if I cat my command line file,
I see that what was passed to the kernel at boot time as boot parameters were the quiet, read right,
VGA equals 785, which specifies a VGA mode, IRQ pole, and then root equals slash dev slash SDA,
specifying dev slash SDA. And you might say, well, Dan, what do some of those mean?
Where do I find out what kind of boot parameters I pass? Well, that's a great question.
There's a couple of different places you can look.
Okay, so let's re, let's go back, take a quick look at the boot parameters that were passed to the triple EPC.
Again, the first one that we came upon was quiet.
Now, what quiet means is, do not pass or disable log messages, do not enable logging for the kernel.
So it disables logging messages, nothing gets logged, that's quiet.
All right, now, read right, again, if you recall, when the system boots up,
it will first mount the root partition, read right, or read only, or whatever.
This specifies the kernel, it will specify the right, read, root, the amount at read right.
VGA equals 785, that's an environmental parameter.
That says to set the mode for VGA to 785.
What that actually means, there's a nice little, usually in a write-up in the grub menu list,
or I believe on a Wikipedia, and how the boot parameter, how to specifies what those modes are.
And what I can tell you about 785 is, so if you're looking in that file I specified,
we're saying that we're looking at 785.
And what 785 says to do is to set the frame buffer resolution, VGA mode to 64K,
and at 640 by 480 screen resolution.
So it's a little higher than 16, it's 64,000 kilobytes, 64K.
Now, if we wanted to go 800 by 664K, we would specify 788,
a setting of 795 would be 1280 by 1024 at 16 megabit color, 16 megabit color, 60 million color.
So, you know, that's pretty simple right there.
Again, you could probably find that in your grub menu list, or on the boot parameter, how to,
now the next one we have is IRQ poll.
IRQ poll will force the kernel of the search for all handlers for an interrupt,
that it finds that it's not handled.
So it'll pull the IRQ for that.
And finally, the last parameter is root equals devSDA1.
So it sets the root to the device, ScuzzyDiscA partition1.
So it's the first ScuzzyDisc on the root partition.
Now, where can you find a lot of this information, what boot parameters that you can pass?
Well, you're going to have to call some of this from different resources.
One, you can rack your brains out trying to pick through these sources for the modular or kernel section of the kernel that you want to reconfigure or pass parameter to.
You might find it in the top of the source code, you might find it in the middle, you might find it in the end.
It's really difficult to find a lot of these things in the source code, unfortunately.
Which is why the kernel-parameters.txt file in the kernel documentation is a godsend for a lot of this stuff.
It is a wonderful utility.
If you have your kernel sources, you go into the documentation and look at the file kernel-parameters.txt.
And that'll list probably the majority of the prompt-parameters that you can pass.
And what they mean and some of the different values that you could pass to them.
Read the how-to, the kernel-boop-round how-to is a great place to look at.
Some of the more common parameters that one might pass.
And it's a fairly old document that gets updated with some frequency.
So a lot of the information in there, while some of it may not be applicable to modern systems, is still very valuable.
So I'll give you an idea as to what you need to do.
And of course, if you're having a problem with your system, look at the forums, mailing lists for the distribution that you're using.
And chances are there may be something if you're having a problem booting that you, or how we're being detected properly, that you could pass to the boop-round to assist this.
Now, I said to you before that if the module is not compiled into the kernel, that you wouldn't pass parameters to it.
And that is true.
There's a different way of passing parameters to modules that haven't been compiled into the kernel.
So I'm trying to cover that at another time.
But just a little nugget of information for you that you could take away is there's a couple of different files.
Depending on the system, how your system is handling this, it used to be a file called modules.conf or conf.modules that was handled.
The blackware used to use that, I think it still does actually.
The RC.modules file would call that modules.conf or slackware RC.modules file had a list of all the different modules that it would probe for.
And you can uncomment a section in there like if you had a certain sound card, you can uncomment that.
And it would automatically probe for that card using the values there.
You can call them manually using the mod probe or the insmod command.
Mod probe is better to use.
So you wouldn't pass those parameters off to the modules.
Now, of course, there's other systems like you dev that handle some of this in the hotplugging where you would specify the different parameters in their configuration files.
But those are for another day.
So today we just talked briefly about the Linux boot prompt and what stuff you could pass there.
A few other things I want to reiterate to you is that if you hose your system, you can't get into it.
You forget the root password or something.
Sometimes you can get back into it and fix your system by booting into the single user mode, which would be the name of your kernel.
And then you could pass either the number one or sometimes allows you to go in there by type again, single, s-i-n-g-l-e.
And it'll boot into user, a single user mode.
And you can do stuff like run FSCK on your disk, fix your, you know, do a partition check, get into stuff.
Now, a lot of distributions these days, a lot of distributions require you to log in as root.
It provides root password to get into the system single user mode.
So if you forgot your root password, you're going to have to go in there another way.
And wipe out your root password or change it by editing the password file from another distribution.
Anyway, that being said, you could also pass, you'll get into single user mode by passing in it equals slash bin slash s-h.
And that will pull up a shell instead of running in it and allow you to run a bad shell just like that.
So that is basically the boot prompt out to.
And if you have any questions, email me at danathelynicslink.net.
And if you have any comments, either post in the comments section on AcroPublic Radio or send me the comments, danathelynicslink.net.
I wish you a wonderful day.
And thank you for your patience on this.
And I hope it wasn't too choppy and disjointed.
Have a great one and enjoy your happy hacking.
Thank you for listening to AcroPublic Radio.
HPR is sponsored by carro.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all of us in need.

226
hpr_transcripts/hpr0082.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,226 @@
Episode: 82
Title: HPR0082: Root kits
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0082/hpr0082.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:11:11
---
u
u
u
And hi Linux Basement listeners and welcome to Finix's Student Huckers Guide to Linux
and today's topic, Root Kits. My name is Anne but you guys can call me Finix.
One in today's segment I'm going to talk about Root Kits in some detail.
Now there isn't going to be a practical aspect like last week but more of a discussion.
The idea of this guide is to make you aware of Root Kits, what they can do, their history,
the varying different types of Root Kits. I'm also going to discuss a couple of possible
countermeasures and steps that you can take to defend yourself against Root Kits.
So I'll start off by describing what a Root Kits is and a little bit about their history.
Well a Root Kits can be best described as a piece of software that functions at the
lowest level in operating system, infiltrating the kernel. Root Kits is a technique that is often
used by hackers and virus creators to hide files and their processes that they're intrusion
traits. This technology has also been used by manufacturers to hide digital rights management
software and one of the best known cases of this was Sony. I can't really talk about Root Kits
without talking about this first. It's one of the best known cases in manufacturers using
Root Kits to hide DRM technology. However due to many issues within their Root Kits and the DRM
software was soon discovered and Sony was left with a lot of egg on their face and some would
say lucky to avoid prosecution. In 2005, Sony BMG, in attempt to prevent people from copying CDs,
started to bundle with its albums two pieces of software that were installed without notice
and without warning in the unit. These packages were called Extended Copyright Protection
or XCP and MediaMars CD-3. Furthermore to this, their lack of any uninstallation software
some argued make them liable for both civil and criminal actions. This incident was the
shock of the world but did it shock the world because the music label had taken extreme steps
or did it bring the general public closer to the truth that your machine can be hacked with
something as simple as a purchase of a new album. In real terms, the purpose of a Root Kits
to maintain access, attack and compromise other systems and to gather or destroy information
was covering deleting any tracks of them ever being there. However the truth of it is,
Root Kits have been around from at least the mid-90s and tools that went into making the first
Root Kits like file cleaning software which was found back in 1989 on a hack system have been
around for a while. As far back as 1994 when the first Root Kits were becoming apparent on the
Sony OS, then in 1996 when they were discovered on the Linux system. Root Kits all as they are also
known by the term Kits, which I think is an in respect to very good description for them.
You mostly see them being a collection of different tools making a combination of processors
to gain the desired stealthy freedom. It is in unix where the term Root Kits comes from,
a kit to have full privileges of a system and as we all know Root being the account with full
super user privileges. If a corporate company can employ software which are the very heart of it
and its design is to gain full unsolicited access to a system to stop you from copying CDs,
what do you think a hacker could do with this technology? I've personally met victims of Root Kits
whose personal data has been stolen across multiple accounts and had the credit cards and
email addresses being used without their permission. These are not just average weekend computer
users but seasoned experienced computer professionals. Anyone can fall foul to Root Kits. However,
steps can be taken to protect yourself from this. Some can be employed by using plain and simple
common sense, some by the community and some by thinking about security when installing and
preparing your base install. Imagine yourself as a system admin. You have two weeks holiday
planned before you go you unlock all the filing cabinets, write the password to every computer
on a post at note and stick it to the computer. Open every port on your firewall, pick your suitcase,
up and forget the office for two weeks. What do you think the damage would be when you get back?
The reality of a Root Kits is all of the above can be done without the knowledge of the system
However, a key point to remember here is Root Kits are not exploits in themselves. They are only
deployed in an already compromised system. Those threats are as real and windows as they are in Linux.
Root Kits can be broken down into a number of different categories, virtualized Root Kits. These
are the one and the most nasty Root Kits that I can imagine and will be modified and they work
by modifying the boot sequence so that the Root Kits is loaded rather than the OS and from there
they are able to load the original OS as a virtual machine. This enables the Root Kits to intercept
all of the hardware costs that the OS makes. The worrying aspect is twind with the grown number
CPUs that are supporting virtualization technology within their actual chipset and my personal
belief this Root Kits technology will grow and grow. Kernel level. A kernel level Root Kits
works by actually replacing the kernel code or adding extra code to the OS, either in the kernel
or by device drivers. Marge OS is to knock to distinguish the difference between kernel
and device drivers and then so kernel Root Kits tend to come in the form of the loadable kernel
modules in Linux and device drivers in windows. The massive issue here is when on a
fetid access to the code these Root Kits have a tendency to make the OS unstable. They also
know for being very hard to detect as they work at the same layer as the OS. Library level.
Library Root Kits patch or hook system core functions with code that hides the attacker.
In theory they should be easy to find by examining the code libraries for changes
DLLs in windows for changes against the originals however due to updates and service pack upgrades
this isn't so easy in practice. Application level. Application level Root Kits work by replacing
actual binaries of Trojanized ones or they can patch or hook existing binaries.
Firmware Root Kits. Firmware Root Kits infect systems by creating a persistent malware
image within the driver or platform firmware. It is easy for Root Kits to hide here as the code
is really inspected for integrity. Detecting Root Kits can be a bit of a mixback. Root Kits
binaries can mostly be detected by elistic messes or signature base detection in the similar ways
of virus scan or detects viruses as long as they haven't been run by the user and they haven't
concealed themselves. Root Kits have many different tools than one kit that can replace many
important and critical programs and tools within an OS. The problem lies here that you can't
trust the results of what the OS is telling you from a simple case of listing run and processes.
The reality is the OS now doesn't operate in the way it was its design is intended to.
Due to the replacement of critical tools and libraries it is also very unwise if you detected a
Root Kits just to attempt to completely remove it. In most cases this could lead to your system
being completely unstable and permanently damaged. One of the most reliable methods of detecting
a Root Kits is to use a live CD as the OS isn't affected and I'll be able to boot your system
and read on me mana. Non-warning Root Kits cannot hide itself. Root Kits tend to hide themselves
during scan by suspending their services until any scans are completed as you can imagine
it's extremely difficult for a Root Kits to hide itself if it's not allowed to run.
There are many products in both Linux and Windows for detecting Root Kits but the reality holds
clear that prevention is far better than cure. It's a fact that most system admins and experienced
administrators would rather than attempt to remove a Root Kits would save data files, format and
reinstall. Within the imaging software it makes the installation of Kino as a simple procedure
compared to the time effort and cost of a suitably experienced admin to locate, remove and check
system integrity. Now that I have scared you about the damage and implications of Root Kits
I think I should tell you about the many countermeasures you can employ to protect yourself against
these threats. The good news for Linux uses is there are a number of tools available
and for most parts they employ quite simple intelligence in their design. One of the key methods
is fingerprinting the OS so that any critical files have been altered or changed by the Root Kits
can be marked up against the hash and easily notice. The first thing I would like to talk about
is the patch that you could put in between the chair and the keyboard, namely you. I've said this
before but I really wanted to reiterate this point Root Kits are not exploits. They are only used
when a system has been compromised by ensuring that your system is up to date and checking your
system security, trying to prevent it from attacking penetration, make sure that you are using
trusted sources for your software. One of the key defensive strategies to defending yourself
from zero days is mapping the behavior of applications. Two applications spring to mind and a choice
for using them is completely up to you. SC Linux or security enhance Linux and Apple are both
utilised Linux security module or known as LSAN. The criticism of SC Linux is that for an
average desktop user installing a number of packages on a weekly basis, which in my opinion
in a high number of people using Linux are likely to experiment with the open source packages.
The constant configuration of security policies may be a hindrance. I've often been told that
this defensive strategy is best suited for large IT networks that will have installed all the
packages that they need and then use SC Linux more as they lock down to them. In short, and this is
by no means an in-depth explanation of SC Linux uses NSA's MAC which in this context stands for
mandatory access control which cannot be bypassed by a user. I think what I should do here is maybe
explain a couple of terms that I'm going to use here. I'm going to mention what discretionary
access control it's known as DAX. Discussion access control is when a system restricts access
to an object dependent on password or to a group that that object belongs to. User with certain
privileges can either bypass or grant access to that object. You heard me refer to MAC earlier on
which stands for mandatory access control. Munchary access control is when a system restricts
access to an object based on its sensitivity and needing necessary clearance to view it.
Normally by the virtue of flaps this cannot be bypassed and this is what makes it a mandatory
access. When I'm referring to objects try to think of these as a passive entities that control
or receive information. Access to these objects gives you access to those informations that they hold.
Some examples of this would be records, blocks, pages, segments, files, directories,
directories and programs as well as bits, bytes, words, fields, processors, video displays,
keyboards, clocks, printers, network nodes. In the case of SC Linux not only is their objects
but services are also known as domains. Within the construct of domains are not allowed to
access other parts of the system that they one wouldn't generally be in the nature of that
domain to do. So example Firefox wouldn't be able to gain access to any SSH keys.
In this approach it limits the chance of greatly of third party applications being able to have
what we would terms buffer overflows. This is not for the faint hearted and as I've said
there is debate if this is truly a user-friendly enough approach for desktop user market.
Mifelings and by no way base your opinion on this but if you're opening your system up to the
internet and offering services such as a web server or Java server then you should consider some
form of intrusion prevention system. You have a door for everyone to access on the internet
with a service that can be exploited. Another package that I'd like to talk about is a package
called Appama. Now Appama was heavily developed by Naval and what's known as a named based access
control and it also utilizes the Linux security module. One of Appama's main goals is to be easy
to understand and implement. One of the key features of Appama is what's known as learning
mode and at the heart of this mode is to help users maintain and manage policies. Learning mode
is sometimes referred to as complain mode and during this mode it will allow process to run
that it would have normally denied and logged that down. This allows the user to go back and check
what process is being run when a program was being run. The key feature here is easy deployment
in production how environment however the big keys we profile programs rather than the systems.
We could profile the whole system but this could take a while. The idea we profile a program that
likely be to be targets for exploits such as web prowls, browsers, PDF readers, SSH demons and so on.
The concept is based on a network threat model. Seems as one reality we really are protecting
ourselves against is attacks from outside or within the network. The reality of it is we're making
a firewall of sorts around any application. I'm going to get a little technical here for a second
but I think it will help to clarify some points. There are two security concept models to think about.
One is misuse prevention which works with black lists or the way to think of black lists
are things that we are not allowed to do or anonymally prevention which works by whitelists or things
that we are allowed to do. Black lists are the kind of things that virus killers employ. So it basically
says you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this and you can't do that. It's basically
a signature based protection. Well 70 or 1000 signatures later and they are still updating
shows that there's flaws in the misuse prevention because the attackers can always think of new ways
to do things. In a polar opposite, anonymally protection lists what can be done and everything else
is blocked by default. This is by a far more secure model because it doesn't matter what the
attacker thinks of a new way to do something or not. It's still going to be blocked. A good
example of how our partner can defend an application and how we put a firewall around a program
such is NTPD or now at time protocol demon. Now this is a demon that has root privileges and is
going to change something on your system namely the time and it needs a network port open so it
can communicate with the time server to clarify the time. If someone finds an exploit in NTPD
then they could spawn a root shell. Well with app armor we can lock down what access NTPD
has to what files. So much so that we can make sure that NTPD doesn't have access to a shell
doesn't have access to any other files like password files. So if it is exploited then all that
can really be done is that the time view system can be changed. It's very quick to make policies
and I think the learning curve is quite small. We've built in policies for much typical user
stuff and syntax that's pretty easy to understand and implement without too much hard work.
You will need to do your own research on this subject as in the context of this segment
I'm not really going to have time to talk you through configuring it. However both of these tools
are an essence a way of stopping you from being hacked and would give you almost a superior
level of control if someone inserts malicious code into your OS by defining not only how applications
function but at a level well beyond layer security right at the heart of the kernel. I have
supplied many links with many links within this documentation to support this segment and my
advice is to go and take some time and investigate for your own specific requirements. Documentation
will be available on both the Linux Basement website and www.TheLinuxsociety.org.uk.
A more traditional method is to look for a ruckus on the system but in my opinion this is
far too late and it's something I wouldn't do but there are two scanning tools available for
Linux called check root kit and archae hunter. Both are signature based and both have extreme
limitations. Choosing them being signature based they are only going to find root kits that are
well known and not been modified. When you think that root kits are predominantly written and c
it's easy for them to be modified and become undetectable. Now you could run them against the
life your life system it's not recommended or you could run them against an alternate of
media such as a live CD. You could load a live CD, mount your drives and then scan those drives.
That would be the latter would be my suggestion however this is only going to pick up the
much lame root kits and as I've already said if you do find a root kit then it's very very unrise
for you to rip that root kit straight out. Another package that I'd like to talk to you today about
is the package called tripwire. Tripwire is designed to detect any changes that are made to
files and directress and then notify via via via email. There is a lot of work to set this up.
Tripwire stores the information about critical files and the particulars and the database such as
date and time file size and checks on. Then tripwire can match this information about what it knows
about those files against what it finds out about those files. Tripwire needs to update its
records very regular so running it as a cron job is much advised. Then tripwire can send that
in the email when any file that has been changed. Tripwire encrypts its own database as well
to save it from being tampered. The true power of tripwire is its easy detection of
Trojanized biners. This works by checking the checksum of the files. Once a hacker tries to replace
the biners with their own or tamper with other files the checksum will be changed. The concept
is pretty simple in design however the power that it holds is massive. My advice is that if you
set up tripwire you should do it on a clean OS. The added problem if you set it up and you're
already sitting on your system or that you've been running for a while you don't actually know
if you've been root-cuttered or not so you may be giving yourself a full sense of security
and I suppose with the good news that Ubuntu, Harin or becoming out soon I imagine a lot of people
would be doing upgrades. It may be worth while you're doing that to spend some time investigating tripwire
backing up all your data files having a clean OS and installing tripwire. I don't really have
the time to go into a detailed explanation on how to guide but what I can tell you is there's a lot
of links in my support documentation to go along with this segment and there is a lot of
documentation out on the internet. So any of the things that I've talked to you about today's
such as SE Linux app on a tripwire with a day's worth of research you're going to be able to
give yourself a very secure system indeed. Well I suppose that brings us to the end of Finix
the student hackers guide to Linux and this segment to do with root kits. I hope I've not
scared you too much about the dangers of root kits. This is to make you aware that they are there
and they are a real threat. However there are steps that you can't take to defend yourself.
I've said this a couple of times during this segment but it is a point that I'd like to make
very very very clear. Root kits not exploits in their own right. They are only deployed on an
already hacked system. If you take steps to defend yourself against this you take great steps
on defending yourself against being root kid. Once again I'd like to apologise if I've ummed
and erred and sounded a little bit rushed. This is only my second time now of doing anything like this.
Well this has been Finix. I'd like to thank you all for listening. Do go over to either the Linux
basement website or www.thelinuxsociety.org.uk for any support documentation with this segment.
And thank you for listening.

167
hpr_transcripts/hpr0083.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,167 @@
Episode: 83
Title: HPR0083: Flock
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0083/hpr0083.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:12:32
---
.
.
.
Welcome again to one of my Ramblinger Insightful shows, with me Zoak as your host. I use
as you can come for me children, then we'll begin.
A long time ago in a galaxy country far far away, or maybe not so far away depending
on where you're listening to this, there were a group of people. These people made
something and it was let out into the world for all to enjoy. They started to worry though
that if they let people enjoy what they'd made over and over again, then the world wouldn't
need anything new. So they put a rule out. People could enjoy their stuff, but only for
a little while. Then you had to put it away and store it in a really big building and
not touch it ever again. At first everything they had ever made was stored in this building,
but in time the building became 2 and 3. Until in the entire city you had to be used
to store these things that no one would ever be allowed to see again. This made no sense,
so someone decided to talk to the buildings so they didn't have to store any other things
ever again. Well okay, that isn't quite what happened, but that's roughly what happened
to Doctor Who. The people were the actors in the actors guild. The actors were worried
that once the BBC had a certain amount of shows done, they would just show nothing
but repeats or mostly repeats and most of them would be out of work. So the actors union
only allowed a certain number of repeats of each programme. The BBC then had a huge
amount of film of old shows they couldn't do anything with. As the film increased, someone
finally decided to wipe it all because there was no reason the BBC wouldn't want to keep
any of it. They couldn't do any of it. They ended up reusing some of the film if they
could, but they didn't need any of it. It was trashed, it was all gone. It just means
a huge amount of shows from the 60s were wiped. I mean not just the BBC but everyone did
it. Lots of the BBC episodes were lost and are known as the Lost Episodes. This reminds
me of all the rubbish going on with DRM nowadays, with the RIA and the MPAA telling you what
you can and can't do with the recordings. The good thing for Doctor Who though was because
it was such a big hit. It was sent out by lots of other countries and some of them still
had copies. After the actors union dropped their stupid rule, the BBC could then get the
episodes back and air them again. And of course once they aired them, the actors then
got some money. I'm sure it wasn't as much, but they still got some money for airing
it again. So they went back to all the different countries and tried to get all the episodes
and they got a lot from Australia for example, some from America. There was even one story
about there was a guy he'd been a guard or something at the BBC and he'd actually borrowed
some of these roles of film because no one was using them. They were going to destroy
them and he'd taken them home and stuff to Melizzatic and he'd left there and he'd died many
years later because this is in the 60s and he died sort of in the 90s and his kids were
going through and they found this and didn't quite know what it was, had the BBC logo
on it so took it to the BBC and said, hey what's this? Turned out to be a Doctor Who episode.
There was another one, an old episode. For some reason they had the black and white
copy but they didn't have the colour copy but it was a high quality black and white copy.
Now they'd shown it in colour and someone had taped it illegally of course but they taped
it in America. Now that caused issues because it was the whole different PAL, NTSC and everything
and it was a fairly naft quality but it had the colour in it so what they did is they
warped and twisted the colour image to make it match the black and white and took the
colour and put it over the black and white to get the quality from the black and white
and the colour from the cassette tape. That was fixed and that was released a few years
back. Yet more episodes have been kept as audio recording's only and they've actually
been animated back in to have the episodes. So this is a terrible loss and so down to
the actor's seat guild being worried about, she's being repeated too much. When of course
they do get their repeat showing fees. I'm sure it's not as much as if you're in work
full-time but let's face it, you don't have to do any work for it, you just get sent
to check every month. The same thing's happening with CDs, everyone's expected to buy the
new CDs and we're now expected to upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray and all that. We never
own this stuff, it's just a license and it just bugs the hell out of me and if you look
at what happened with Doctor Who it just, there is a possibility we could lose a lot of
this music because you don't have any rights to it anymore. There was a story recently
about how our IAA had sent out a ton of demo discs. The demo discs weren't wanted and
they were thrown in the trash, someone took them out of the trash and sold them and he
was being sued for pirating this or covering it in front of whatever the hell they want
to call it because they hadn't allowed him to sell it even though they thrown it away
in the trash. I mean so it's a bunch of stuff that really bugs me and I'm surprised that
we haven't lost more music and more things like some of these older episodes Doctor Who.
But it is good news that some of the artists do seem to be getting the hang of it now and
you've got more and more of them are rejecting their record labels and releasing stuff on
their own or even simply letting everyone download it for themselves. I mean this is a good
plan for any new bands because piracy isn't the problem, it's obscurity, it's the big
problem. Anyway, enough writing about that, I'm going to go on to what the main topic
of today is going to be, which is flock. Now flock is a web browser, it's based on
the Firefox code, you can get it from flock.com, it's available for Linux, Windows, Mac, it's
on version 1.1 currently and as I said it's based on Firefox, they took the source code
and they've changed a few things, it's also open source which is good. But the main difference
between flock is they actually taglines flock for social web browser.
They hook you into everything. I'm going to assume you've got flock, you're looking at it
on the page, it looks a little different, they've tweaked a few bits here and there but they have
various different things, you get this extra light coloured icon bar below the back folder,
reload and home and all that. The first one is about my world and it's all your stuff basically
so it's got a list of Twitter feeds, any media you have, any RSS feeds, anything like that,
you can actually organise this quite a lot. Next one is the people cyber which actually
happens on the site bit like all in one cyber for Firefox. You have a list of all these people
here, in this case I've got my YouTube, I've got Twitter and I can go and see what comments
I've got my latest comment there, let's say on recording an hkl episode, exclamation mark,
bump and that's gone and sent the message out to everyone and I've got all the other people
here, will we since replying to someone saying the cake is a lie and stuff like that. We've got all
the lists down here. We also have my Flickr, not that I actually have anything down there, I've got
the Linux action shown, no master yoder on there but I can click on no master yoder there and it
will take me to his Flickr site and we can see what images he has there and he has some funny
ones, he's got one of Bill Gates recommending Ubuntu and things, there's picture of tux here, big
sand tux which is cool but I can go down there and if I go from there and click on what is the
final icon there, the photo uploader, I can click on that and it loads up, it's a photo uploader
and what I can actually do is simply drag my photos over into there or in this case drag over
this image of tux although it doesn't, although Flickr does something odd, you can't just drag its
rate over you, I actually have to click on it to get the image itself and not the weird random
JavaScript stuff and click on that and drag it over into the photo uploader and it puts it in there
and then you can upload it to wherever you want and this is some going to rename the file, put a
description in and I can put tags and then I can upload it to wherever I want, this case I'm going
upload it to Picasso and if we go to my Picasso site then we can find it alternatively, if we go to
the third icon and the open the media bar what it actually does is the top part now drops down
and we have media streams that defaults are going to Flickr and looking at something called
interestingness, whatever that is but I can go down there to my accounts and go to my Picasso
such as Picasso and loads up my pictures and there we go, we have all the images I have but one
of them in particular the one I just uploaded which is the picture of tux and the comments, it's
all of them, no mastery odour, I know it's no mastery odour, I just felt like breaking it out
differently and there we go, awesome this media stream we can go to YouTube and say what have
got top raiders, if we want it does a quick search and brings all that up but that's pretty cool
you can get these things going on, top 10 Jackie Chan Stunts, I'll be in the chief one of her
and that bloke whose name escapes me but he was doing the Wii remote stuff, Jason Lee or something,
something is like the MIT got the did all the stuff for that but we can have a look at all that,
that's pretty cool, the next icon is the A for Feeds so bar which we get all the feeds now,
I don't use that, I actually have, I use Google for my feed reader, my RSS reader, so I use Google
reader for that, we then have my inbox for Google Mail and Yahoo and stuff, apparently I've got
one I'm really emailing there but I don't check that myself, I followed chest griffins,
description on how to run an iMap server and I'm actually running an iMap server to grab and
collate all my emails, we can also open favorite side bars the next icon, we have at the top
the local favourites and at the bottom the online favourites that hooks and delicious
and you can copy from one stuff to another, the next one is picture of a key, it's all your accounts
and you can see my youtube delicious my personal blog, scout stuff twitter, flicker, Picasso,
jimmo and zoke.org remember droople, more on that in a moment, we'll click on the next one,
it's a clipboard, we can drag anything down, text, links, images, anything really,
drag them down to the side and we can put them into folders and organize them, save them a bit
for later if we want to look at stuff later, which is pretty cool, next one is open blog editor,
now this is a really cool one, what we can do here is we can go and actually type something in,
you have a little, almost looks like an email and you can type stuff in there and if I type
something in, what should we do, blogging for dummies and actually I've got a better idea,
what we can do, don't say that, what we can do if we go back to the flicker page
and back to the image that we had there, what we can do on this, if we can actually right click
on the comments sound, just sound blah blah blah, right click and say blog this and it automatically
brings it up with a link to it and everything, so we change the title for blogging for dummies
and we can put any tags we wanted to publish and oh look, I've just got a new email
or anywhere that's from, we can post it to whichever blog we want, in this case we can put
Zoke under story, we can pick the categories, now that doesn't seem to work in Drupal but it does
work in WordPress, publishes a new post or a place existing post, that seems to have some issues,
it knows what it's posted but if you haven't posted a three, it doesn't seem to pick it up always,
ad blogged with, ad blogged with flock to the end of your post, I never bother with that and
visit blog after publishing, that one doesn't always work because it has issues with Zoke.org for
example, but we can do that, if I post that and send that and if we go to Zoke.org,
we press that and then we get blogging for dummies, there we go, it's just appeared, of course if
anyone is actually checking the timestamps on this, yes I am choosing, I did do that blog post
earlier, I did rerecord this because I screwed up and lost some of it in the sound of crap and
I wanted to read it, anyway so that's most of it on the side, the social stuff anyway,
most of the rest of it's just very similar standard sort of Firefox stuff basically,
pretty much every Firefox extension works under flock, but it's just if you're doing any blogging
or in stuff like that, it's a lot easier because in this case I can go simply go to hack a
public radio for example, when this episode gets posted, right click on that and blog about it
and then instantly get a blog up and ready and don't have to worry about any of the links and
stuff they're there automatically, apart from that, as I said everything's pretty much the same,
I just love the way you can upload stuff and drag images and still pictures of, I mean,
share images, quite easily using Flickr and Picasso or any of the other things, I mean if I
get back to accounts and have a look at the list, it supports Facebook Flickr Twitter YouTube,
Photobucket Picasso, Pixo, Blogger, Blogs and live journal typepad WordPress.com, Zanga or
Self-hosted blog, that one you can just add and say this is my blog and it tries to figure out what
it is, delicious Magnolia and Gmail and Yahoo Mel and they're adding more all the time,
so that's a basic overview, I think it's really cool, if you do anything social at all on the
internet, which is pretty much everyone now, because everyone's got their own blog, everyone puts
pictures on Picasso or whatever, so you can do that and it's just really cool that it's just
got all on the side and all there ready for you and whatever you want, it's there, I think it's
really cool, it's also all open source, you can go and download it, play around with it and
whatever you want, so there's no problem with anything there, I think that's about it really,
thank you very much for listening and we'll catch you all later.

2288
hpr_transcripts/hpr0084.txt Normal file
View File

File diff suppressed because it is too large Load Diff

65
hpr_transcripts/hpr0085.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
Episode: 85
Title: HPR0085: Faubackup
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0085/hpr0085.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:16:42
---
music
Hello and welcome to another episode of Packup Public Radio.
I'm DeepGeek and this episode was originally recorded in April of 2008.
This episode is a software review of Fallbackup and is part of our series on lightweight applications.
The lightweight application series is open to all HPR contributors and is OS agnostic.
Fallbackup is a command line backup tool developed at Friedrich Alexander University in Erlengen Nuremberg.
Fallbackup is interesting for two reasons.
The first is that command line nature is particularly given to automating backups.
And the second reason is that its way of backing up files creates a really easy to use system of versioning.
First, command line. Upon installing Fallbackup, I was immediately impressed
in that automatically inserts a script into the Etsy Kron.Daily folder, which gets run daily.
The script has the default directory is commented out.
So all I had to do was delete the hash symbol and voila, instant daily backup.
It was that easy.
By default, all the defaults can be overwritten by adding the Fallbackup.conf file in the Etsy directory.
It writes backups to a directory called slash backup.
You can create this in the root directory or create a partition for it.
Simply by doing so and pointing the Etsy FS tab file to the appropriate place.
What I did personally is I bought a spare hard drive and installed it on a separate controller
than my main disk.
I then set the disk to go into standby in about half an hour of no use.
For me, this is a good thing because I want to protect myself against my main disk failing.
Also, since the second disk is used only rarely, it simply is not used as much as the main disk.
You can also do a few advanced things with the target of your backups.
For instance, it will accept the backup directory being on an NFS share just fine.
But you do have to tell the NFS server to accept this machine's root user as a root user on its system.
You can also backup over SSH or RSH. The flexibility is there.
But it really made me fall in love with full backup though, is the way it stores the files it backs up.
Full backup in its default configuration creates a file structure where for each machine and each major directory,
it creates a sub directory with a date stamp and copies all the files into that directory.
Now, you may be thinking, wait a minute, that's a lot of files for a daily backup.
But does not store all those files.
Most Linux file systems support what is called hard links.
Basically, if a file is unchanged, full backup creates a hard link to the file.
Full backup maintains by default, but you can override this if need be.
Two annual backups, 12 monthly backups, and four weekly backups.
Now, if a file is never changed, full backup will store one instance of the file and create 18 links to the same file.
So the file will be stored once and will appear in many different directories.
Also, full backup takes advantage of sparse files, which means that if the file has blocks of null space, that space will be saved.
So, let me tell you what it's like to retrieve a file from backup with full backup.
It creates a regular file system, which means any method you want to use to get a file back will work.
You can use regular batch file management tools like LS and CP.
You can use a favorite graphical file manager like Rocks, Nautilus, Conqueror, Dolphin or Midnight Commander 2.
If you have FTP or SFTP surface, you can also pull files through that also.
This is all because it uses regular plain Linux files, so anything works on it.
If you want, they have a source for its site at filebackup.sf.net.
Let me set it phonetically.
Foxtrot Alpha Uniform Bravo Alpha Charlie Kilo Uniform Papa Dot Sierra Foxtrot Dot.
November Echo Pango.
You can preview the manual pages there, as well as make inquiries by emailing their mailing list.
If you decide to try it, I hope you will enjoy it.
Today's geek tidbit, let's have a little geek haiku.
Wily Quick Page eludes you handsomely.
Smack that mouse harder.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public League.
HPR is sponsored by tarot.net, so head on over to CARO.nc for all of us in need.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.

261
hpr_transcripts/hpr0086.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,261 @@
Episode: 86
Title: HPR0086: Kismet
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0086/hpr0086.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:18:51
---
为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此为此
Well, hi and welcome to Finnex's Student Hackers Guide to Linux. My name's Aaron Finne,
but you guys can call me Finnex. So the aim of this segment is to take you through
a Linux-based package that can be used to test your network or system security. There's
an ethical hacking student app at the University in Scotland, and an avid Linux find that
will pleasure a welcome and a number of packages that are functional on Linux car operating
and the package I would like to talk to you today about is a wireless network scanner
and a snifical kismet, and how kismet can be used to scan for wireless networks and devices.
The aim of today's Student Hackers Guide to Linux is to use kismet coupled with a GPS device
and Google Earth for war driving. There is a how-to guide to support this segment.
It's going to be made available on both the Linux basement website and www.bilimicssociety.org.uk.
I do suggest getting a hold of this first,
definitely before you start any installation or configuration. I may refer to it from time to time,
but both this segment and how-to guide are for educational uses.
You've got to remember guys, education is our biggest weapon in the war against insecurity,
so use this guide with responsibility. I suppose I should start off by telling you a little
bit about world driving. World driving is the act of searching for wireless networks by a person
moving vehicle using a Wi-Fi enabled computer such as a laptop or PDA. It's sort of similar to
using a radio scanner or the amateur radio practice in DXing. There is a point that I would like
to make clear. Certainly within the UK it's not illegal to do in war driving, however,
I can't say the same for your part of the world. In this war driving guide we never actually
connect to any of the networks that you discover, and I think clear morally I tend to agree with
that. It's certainly not legal to connect to someone else's network without their permission in
UK, and I would imagine most parts of the world it's pretty much the same there too. If it's not
your network, you haven't been invited, then you don't have any place on it. I don't condone it.
If you do it and get yourself into trouble, I'm not going to have any sympathy for you.
Sorry for the kind of government health warning, but I wanted to make it clear that I don't want
you to use this guide for breaking the law. Well guys, the idea behind this guide is that we run
Kismet and the GPS device, and then with that setup we can go and detect secured and unsecured
wireless networks and plot their position anywhere on the planet. Then you can either hop into your
corner, jump on a bike or have a walk with this setup around an area, and then those results are
stored into a database, which will later use to plot your findings. We can get those findings,
and we're going to insert them onto Google Earth. It goes without saying that a laptop is
required for war driving, however you could use a pda, but for the sake of this tutorial we're
going to use a laptop. It also goes without saying, guys, while you're driving, keep your eyes
on the road, not on the laptop screen. We're not going to be responsible for anyone having any
accidents. Even if you don't have a laptop and you're not going to go and do a war drive,
I seriously suggest installing Kismet. It's a fantastic tool for checking your wireless network,
making sure that devices that are connected to your wireless network are known to you.
Also, if you have a lot of Wi-Fi problems, it's also worth running Kismet to see if you have
a conflict with other wireless networks in your area. We're moving on to the main topic of this
guide. So what is Kismet? Well, apart from it being an Indian word meaning feat or look,
it also happens to be a wireless scanning tool. Kismet describes itself as an 802.11 layer
to wireless network detector, SNF and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless
card which supports raw monitoring mode and can sniff out 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g traffic.
Well, simply put what this means is that Kismet's a tool for manipulating the function of your wireless
card and puts into what's known as promiscuous mode. This is also sometimes described as raw
monitoring during the mode, or RFMUN, RFMOM. I suppose the next thing I should really talk about
is active and passive scanning. One of the really cool things about Kismet and it's really known
for this is that it's a passive scanner. Now, I really can't talk about passive scanning without
really touching active scanning and one of the most well-known active scanners that I can think of
as NetStumble. NetStumble works by broadcasting requests for any access point to respond to it.
This is known as any request. Now, the any part of that request is spelled in capital.
Basically what happens is the AP responds to this any request telling the inquire the name of
the network that's responded and thus by doing this it maps that APs there. Now, I can't imagine
this would be to tell your AP not to respond to any request, only respond to requests with its
networks name. This is known as cloaked or hidden wireless networks. However, Kismet doesn't work
like this and this is where the power of Kismet really lines. Kismet makes your card in on what
could be best described as a listening post. A great big ear that's listening out for everything
then it takes that information, dissect it and from there it finds the results. By doing this
is able to decode hidden APs and also detect other wireless devices such as other wireless cards.
Wireless devices send out a constant beacon when they're active. Kismet will see this and then
report that it's found a device program for a network or an AP. It takes that packet that's been
sent out looks inside that packet and from there it can find out a lot of information about that
device such as the MAC address of the device or if it's connected to a network. The MAC address
is needed in a probe or a connection so that any device that receives that probe can respond back.
Try to think that this is an any eye number of mobile phone handset, an absolute address.
You can change your SIM card, you can change the carrier but you're not going to change the
army area, the handset. If a mobile phone operator wanted to send an update rather than picking out
a single mobile phone telephone number to send it to, they would send it to their handset,
they would send it to his any eye fingerprint. It's absolute physical address. As with a MAC address
this number should never be changed, it's a physical identifier for that device. However,
there is a few packages that can be used to spoof MAC addresses.
Well, with Kismet you can run a test and see what wireless networks are open or closed in your
office infrastructure. Like all defensive tools this can be used by a hacker for elicit purposes.
With Kismet you can sit outside a wireless network, never connect to it and then intercept and
sniff all the MAC addresses that connect that that wireless network. If the only security
that you employ on your wireless network is MAC address filtering then you bypass that
ring of security. MAC address filtering is when an AP allows connection to network depending
on the MAC address that the device that's requesting that connection. Most common home wireless
routers have this facility and a number of organisations use MAC address filtering as well.
There are some requirements for your wireless card to use Kismet but the reason it's more of
the Linux tool than Windows tool is more to do with the way that Windows OS interacts with
this hardware via its wireless drivers. If you use NDIS rapid to get your wireless card to work
then unfortunately Kismet's not going to run for you. For most wireless cards in laptops
seem to be supported. I can tell you from personal experience that IPW or the Intel Pro wireless
cards are supported. What to do? Go to www.KismetWireless.net and look for documentation sections to
see if your card is supported. Another package that I want to touch on here is a program called
GPS drive. GPS drive is a navigation system that uses data from GPS devices and plots at
on a MAC. I'm not going to go into much detail about GPS. GPS stands for a global position
in the system and it's a technology it's purpose is to pinpoint your position on the world.
It uses a number of satellites to plot an X and a Y placement. GPS drive works pretty much
hand-in-hand with Kismet and is incredibly easy for Kismet to use. Now for the purpose of this
guide I'm going to use a Ubuntu 7.10 and a pretty standard laptop. The good news install Kismet
with Ubuntu is pretty easy and can be done simply by opening up a command line terminal
using the following command, pseudo aptitude install Kismet or by searching a synaptic package manager.
Kismet is a very popular package indeed and I imagine most package managers and most
distributions will have a copy of it in its repositories. However the source code is available
and it can be downloaded from www.kismetwilis.net and compile from source. But for ease of use I've
used a pre-compiled binary is available in the Ubuntu repositories. Kismet is also available
in the standard Debian repositories as well for anyone that's using a Debian system. The guide
should be pretty much similar. There's a little bit of configuration that needs to be done with
Kismet however it's pretty simple it's only going to take a couple of minutes. Once Kismet's
installed you need to edit the Kismet.conf file which in Ubuntu and in Debian can be found in the
forward slash Etsy forward slash Kismet folder. Now we need to find the wireless capture source which
is going to support your wireless card and Kismet. If you haven't already done so go and visit
www.kismetwilis.net forward slash documentation.shtml and scroll down to section 12.
There is a package that I think is installed by default on Ubuntu but it isn't actually on
Debian called LSHW and it's just to list hardware. The good news that is available in the Debian
repositories and it's also available in the Fedora ones as well if it's not just a quick look around
for it. The reason I say this is you might know what the driver for your wireless card is.
If that's the case you know this package isn't such an important part and you can skip this
step but there is a lot of people where they lack where the hardware is supported by it out of
the box out of Linux and maybe you don't know how your wireless card or what the driver is.
You can download this package. We run this program and what that does is that lists the hardware
for your wireless devices and it did this by issuing the following command. Sudows LSHW space dash
capital C space network. I want this to list all the network devices and the drivers that
are using them. So in my case I issued Sudows LSHW space dash capital C space network from here
that I found my wireless card was using the IPW 3945 driver and then visited the documentation
part of the kismet website, scroll down to section 12 and found that IPW 3945 was supported.
Now in my case there was a couple of choices but I just wanted for a choice that wasn't similar
to my driving name. The next step would be to go and configure the kismet.conf file.
I've used G-Edit to work on the kismet.conf file but like I say you can use any text that you
feel comfortable with. So in a terminal I put in the following command. Sudows G-Edit
space 4 slash Etsy 4 slash kismet 4 slash kismet.conf. That would have been Sudows G-Edit
4 slash Etsy 4 slash kismet 4 slash kismet.conf. And then I located the part of the file that
said S U I D user equals your user here. And I'm placed it with my username. Do not put the
root username in here. Kismet starts with super user privileges and then drops back into normal
user privileges. So in my case I changed it so it read S U I D user equals Aaron. Then we need
to set the capture source. I look for the line that reads source equals non-comma, non-comma,
admi. Now the layout of this line is source equals interface comma capture source comma and you
can ignore the admi part. So now I added the file with the interface. I put an ETH one but this
may be different in your case. For whatever reason if you wish you an iF config this will tell you
what your wireless device is. The source for me was ipw3945 and I left the app in a bit. So my
line read source equals ETH one comma ipw3945 comma admi. Then I looked for the part of the
devices. Part of the config file that says do we have gps? And then look for the line that says
gps equals false. We need to change this to read gps equals true and save an exit file.
To test the configuration of kismet issue the following command into the term pseudo kismet.
Now I warn you that if you are connected to your network via wireless you're going to
first need to disconnect. You can do this by with the no network manager is pretty easy. You can
click right click on it and deselect wireless. Either that or you could issue pseudo iF config
whatever your device is down. Now step two would be to install gps to drive. It's pretty
popular package and there's available in both a standard Ubuntu and Debian repositories.
However if you're using a different distribution this and check your package manager or download
a source code and compile it from source. The web address the gps drive is www.gpsdrive.de.
To install gps drive issue the following command into the terminal pseudo aptitude installed gps drive.
Once that's done we need to configure gps drive to work with the gps device. I've used a Bluetooth
gps device I wouldn't suggest using something like that. Not unless it's the only thing that you had
to hand which was the case here. It adds another layer of technology between you and your system
and the desired results that you want. I'll quickly run through how I'm it got the Bluetooth
Dumbledore to communicate with the gps drive. But like I say it's not what I would recommend.
If you have a device that plugs directly into your system and this is what I'd go out far
go by. If this device works you then drawing if not best thing for you to do is have quick google
about and find out how to make your gps device work. I installed a couple of Bluetooth packages
which are in the standard Ubuntu repository. I don't know about other distributions you'll have
to have a search about. Sudo aptitude installed blue z dash p i n blues dash ut i l s. Once they were
installed I then needed to edit the Bluetooth hcid.com file which I did by issuing the following
command into a terminal. Sudo g edd 4 slash ut c 4 slash Bluetooth 4 slash hcid.com. When that
file opened I replaced it with a config file. I'm going to make that config file available within
the how-to guide. I then went and restart the Bluetooth theme and by issuing the following
command into a terminal. Sudo 4 slash ut c 4 slash i n i t dot d 4 slash Bluetooth space restart.
When this is done I use the Bluetooth download scan for a Bluetooth device in its area by issuing
the phone command into the terminal. Hcid 2 space scan. This listed Bluetooth enabled devices that
were running range. So I got a result back like 001167805801bt dash gps which was the
MAC address of the Bluetooth enabled gps device. I then took this MAC address of the gps device
and then I'm going to make a serial connection between the Bluetooth dungle and the gps device.
I took the MAC address of the device and I used the package called sdp2. I issued a
following command into the terminal sdp2.01167805801 and in the results I got back. I found
the channel that I was looking for. In my case it was channel 1 and I needed to make a file
called rfcom.com. That's rfcom.com in the 4 slash ut c 4 slash Bluetooth folder. By issuing the
following command I have made a sample copy of that config file which will also be available in
the h2 guide. Anyway the command was pseudo g-edit 4 slash ut c 4 slash Bluetooth 4 slash rfcom.com
and I added the contents of the file that I've made available in the h2 guide. So the next thing
to do is start the gps device and issue the following command into the terminal rfcom connect 4.
If for some reason you get an error message like concreate rfcom.tty address already used
then issue the following command into a terminal pseudo rfcom release 4 and repeat the rfcom
connect 4 command again. Once this has been done you need to run the gpsd which is a demon for gps
devices. It should have been stored by d4 one way and stored gps drive but if isn't it's
installed by the following command pseudo aptitude installed gpsd. Once this is done you need to tell
the gpsd where it can find the gps device. This is done by issuing the following command into
a terminal pseudo gpsd 4 slash death 4 slash rfcom fall. Once this is done you can check the gps
device to see that it's working properly by issuing the following command into a terminal x gps.
Next thing we want to do is set up a mysql database to store the the results from gps drive.
After you've done that then we're nearly ready. Once your war drive is done then we can extract
the data apart against google earth. So firstly we need to install mysql. I've done this by
installing it through the Ubuntu repository. I want to check your distribution for documentation
on how to install mysql. I'm installing mysql client version 5 and server version 5 although I
don't think it makes much of a difference. For the purpose of this how to guide I've gone for
those packages. There's also a python interface to mysql data to mysql that you also need. You're
about to install it in this command as well. Sudo aptitude installed space mysql-cline-5.0
space mysql-server-5.0 space python-mysqldb that was python-mysqldb. Once this has been done
you'll need to connect to the mysql server and configure a database for the wireless results
to go into. The germany installation of mysql server you should have been asked for a root password.
If you did set one up you'll need to pass the dashp option on in the following command if you
haven't then just ignore that part. The command is mysql-u space root space dashp space the less
than sign space forward slash usr forward slash share forward slash gps drive forward slash curate.sql
c-r-e-a-t-e.sql then you need to load gps drive up and take the box on the left hand side that
says use sql. Now make sure that gps drive is using gps device that you've set up. You can do that
by going in and clicking the preference box select some sentence to and just confirming that
gps drive is looking at the correct gps device location. In my case that was forward slash
slash rf-4 but it might be forward slash tt-y usb you can close gps drive down. Now if you
look isn't it up again what you'll notice at the bottom of the page is the latitude and the
longitude of your position that's just right above the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
That's kind of all the hard work done. Now if you would load gps drive up again what you
would notice is that on the map any epp points that you detected in Clismet will show up on the gps drive
map. So that's your rig setup and now what you need to do is basically go and get some data.
So like I said before hop into the car have a drive about and go and find some epp points.
Once I get back and you're ready to do the next part what we have to do is extract the data
from the SQL database and then convert that data so that Google Earth can read it. So one of
the things that will probably be a good idea to do now would be to install Google Earth.
Now this is to be honestly quite simple just go to the website www.earth.google.com forward slash
download-earth.html or you could check to see if your package manager has it. Mine does but
that's because I had the Google Ubuntu slash devian repository setup already in there. But once you
have installed Google Earth then you can look at extracting the data from my SQL database into a
.kml format which is the format that Google Earth supports. There is a script that I use to do
this and to be honest with you that would be my suggestion. You could later on if you wanted to get
more data you could look at that script and see how much data you're pulling out. But you would
also probably have to look at constructing a little bit more of a complicated database for GPS
driving and kismet yourself to download data into. But anyway I mean that's for you to have a look
later on kind of went further if this interests you and then you can kind of go deeper into it.
So the script that I'm going to use is a script that's called gpsdrive to google.ers.py.
You can go and download a copy of it from www.delinuxsociety.org.uk forward slash content forward slash
copy of gpsdrive.google.ers.google.ers.py I'll read that address again that the linuxsociety.org.uk forward slash
content forward slash copy dash of dash gpsdrive to google.ers.py. And what to do is just cut and paste
that page's content and then copy that into a new file. The new file will load up by issuing the
following command sudo g-edit gpsdrive to google.ers.py. Copy the contents of that web page into that file
save it and then what we need to do is make it executable. So sudo change mod space plus x space gps
drive to google.ers.py then the next thing to do is move it to where the database is stored.
Now if you're unsure of where the database is stored, it's normally stored in forward slash bar,
it's forward slash lib, forward slash myc, or certainly isn't a Ubuntu and devian. However,
what you could do is you could run the update db command which would be sudo update db and then
locate g-o-imp for which is the name of the database. So what I did then I moved the gpsdrive google.ers.py
file to where the database was stored by doing the sudo mv space gpsdrive to google.ers.py
space forward slash bar forward slash lib forward slash myc, or once that file has been transferred
then what it has run the script I did that by issuing sudo python gps to google.ers.py. Once that's
been done you should see a file left called ap.kml that's the file that we need for google
earth to plot our results I'm to. So sudo mv ap.kml space forward slash home forward slash user
forward slash desktop. Replace the user obviously with your name so in my case it was a home slash
alan slash desktop. Once there we need to load up google earth and then from there we can open ap.xml file
and see where you went on your wall drive and the results are plotted. Well guys that brings us
to the end of Finnex student hackers guide to Linux for this week. I'm going to close by saying
a couple of things. Now I have said that this guide is for educational purposes only and it's not
meant for you to go around and map where you can get free internet access for. I'm very serious when
I say education is the biggest weapon I have in the war against insecurity but showing people
easy it is for us to go and find this information out but and we're not even interacting with a wireless
network we're just listening to it. We can show people that you need to think about wireless security
it is an important thing. You could have people stealing bandwidth from you. You could have a
hackers sit outside a wireless network and hack someone else from your IP address. So like I say
just use the guide with responsibility. They're very interesting results but remember not to break
not to break the law with it. I'd like to thank you guys for bearing with me. This is my first time
that I've done anything like this. If I'm earning an iron a lot and I stumble a bit please forgive me.
I would just like to say remember you wouldn't leave the front door to your house wedo so please
don't leave the front door to your network wedo. This has been Aaron Finne. Phoenix is student
H.P.R. sponsored by caro.net so head on over to C.A.R.O.N.C. for all of us in the

205
hpr_transcripts/hpr0087.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,205 @@
Episode: 87
Title: HPR0087: Compling a Kernel
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0087/hpr0087.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:20:31
---
.
Hacker Public Radio. My name is Klaatu and I'm going to be compiling a kernel.
Kernel compiling has obviously been covered. A lot of places already, magazines, websites,
podcasts. I am not an expert, but I thought that perhaps sort of a generic kernel compilation
episode could be good. Dave Yates recently on his podcast, Lotta Linux Links, covered
compiling a kernel. It was somewhat specific to a Debian system, so I'm going to be doing
what I would call more of a generic version of that. It's compiling a kernel simply because
my experience has been on either Slackware or Fedora, so the end result is not going to
be ending up with a .deb file, for instance, it's just going to be kind of a more manual
way of doing it, perhaps. This is also going to be based quite a bit on some conversations
in the Lotta Linux Links IRC channel with Monster B and Peter 64. If you want to talk
about kernel compiling with a couple of guys who compile kernels every other night, those
are the two guys to talk to. Although that's not an invitation to go in and ask them all
kinds of questions all over the place. I don't want to volunteer them for anything, but
certainly if you want to chat about kernel compiling, they do know a lot about it.
First, you'll need the, well, first, you should ask yourself why you're compiling a
new kernel. Obviously, if your system is not broken, you may not want to fix it, especially
if this is an important machine that you rely on, so keep that in mind. But a lot of times
you'll want to compile a new kernel because you'll need hardware support, and that's a
great reason to go get the latest kernel from kernel.org, where they have the latest
stable version, they have the latest snapshot of the stable tree, they've got the older versions
of the kernels, should you need for some reason, an older kernel. You know, all the source
code that you're going to need is at kernel.org. Now, if you know the link of the source code,
you can also use just a wget, and that's how I usually do it. So I usually cd into my
slash usr slash src directory, and then I simply type in wget space, and then I paste
the link of the source code that I'm looking for. So usually that's like http, colon slash
www.cernel.org slash pub slash linux slash kernel slash v2.6 slash linux dash 2.6.25, it
happens to be 2.6.25 right now, dot tar dot bz2, and that will simply download the source
code as a be zipped file to your slash usr slash src directory. You'll then want to untar
that. So it's t-a-r space dash xjf space linux dash 2.6.25 dot tar dot bz2. That unzips
whatever the source code as a standalone directory. And it's customary, and I'm not really
100% sure why this is, but everyone always tells people to do this, and so I've always
done it, but you make a symbolic link from the from this directory that you've just untard
to a directory called linux. So it's just ln space dash s, space slash usr slash src slash
linux dash 2.6.25, space linux. Okay, so now we've got a symbolic link of a directory
called linux to the source code of our kernel, of our new kernel. So actually I do know
the reason for that. It's, I believe if you're, if you've got any kind of scripts or something
like that that needs to act upon the kernel source code, then no matter what, we always
have a symbolically linked folder called linux, which always is referring to the latest
kernel source code. And that's why that is. So then you can change directory into the
linux directory. So just cds, space, space linux. So here you are, you look around, you
can LS, and you see all the, uh, the different files that the kernel maintainers have packaged
into the latest kernel package. At this point, you are actually able to patch your kernel.
So if there is something that you know specifically, you, you'll need as a kernel patch for whatever
it is, whether it's a security patch or some kind of driver patch, uh, you can do that
right here. So if there is, uh, for instance, a kernel patch that you have downloaded, let's
call it, um, patch one dot bz2. And you would move that to the slash usr slash src. And
then you would simply type in be zip to, that is spelled out. So it'd be the ip and the
number two, space dash dc, space slash usr slash src slash patch one dot bz2, space type,
space patch, space dash p1. And that will patch the kernel so that whatever, like security
patch or hardware patch or driver patch, whatever that you needed to apply is now applied.
Okay, so you'll want to kind of to make sure that you're starting from a fresh, a clean
slate. You're going to type in make space mr proper. That is make space mr proper, easy
enough. That basically just clears out any kind of little binary bits that might have been
leftover from either a previous, uh, compilation effort or anything like that. Once you're
ready, I mean, you're kind of ready right now to technically you could start compiling
the kernel. If you did that at this point, you would be starting really, really from a very
clean slate, maybe too clean because you would have to basically start from the very beginning.
And the very, and if you're, if you're configuring, you're, you're basically going to start
generating a configuration file so that when you type in make or make busy image as the
case may be, the, the comp, the compiler will look at the configuration file for what
you have, for what you've set for your system. And we'll use all those settings to compile
a kernel appropriate for your system. What does this mean? Well, this means that you need
to know everything on your system. You need to know the CPU type. You need to know, uh,
what kind of drive controller you've got, a hard drive controller, uh, controller. Do
you have scuzzies, uh, IDES, uh, SATA, basically everything about your system. What kind of, uh,
Wi-Fi card you have, what kind of graphics card stuff like that. So this is significant
because if you don't know these things, then you're really going to be compiling a kernel
without any kind of clue as to what you're doing. So before you really do this, you need
to really read up on your computer, figure out what exactly your components are that you're
going to need to use. Luckily for you, uh, if you've got a working system as it is and you
probably do since you're able to at least go and download the source code for the kernel
in the first place, uh, you already have a configuration file on your system. And this
is somewhere in your slash boot folder. So it's kind of going to, it's going to be a little bit
different depending on where your system came from and who built it and, and how they built it.
Sometimes the configuration file that you're looking for is, uh, like dot config. So you
won't really see it right away. Uh, sometimes it is, uh, config dash huge dash s m p dash two dot
six dot two one dot five dash s m p. It just really depends on your system. So have a look just
LS space slash boot and you'll see in there that this is your current boot directory. So you'll,
you'll see in there all your all the system maps and all the configuration files and all the
VM linus files, uh, that your system basically is right now having available to it. So have a
poke around in there, find the config, the current config file for the current kernel that you are
using. Uh, if you don't know what kernel you're using currently, simply type in you name that is
the letter u in a m e space dash a v. And this will tell you what kernel you are actually running.
So I do that and I get two point six point to one point five dash s m p, uh, and a lot more
information. But so now I know that that's the kernel version that I am currently running. So if I
use the config file for two point six point two one point two, uh, point five dash s m p, I'll know
that I'll be using the, uh, proper configuration file. So how do I use this old configuration file?
Uh, well, since I'm in my slash usr slash src slash linux directory, I can simply type in
cp to copy cp space slash boot slash config dash huge dash s m p dash two point six point two
one point five dash s m p. So that's just the old configuration file that I've identified, right?
And then I'll type a space dot slash dot config. So what I've done is I've copied the old
configuration file into the current directory. That's the dot slash. And then I've named it dot
config. So I've just basically copied it and I've renamed it to be dot config. That's just an
easy way to grab everything that the kernel already knows about your system and put it into the
current, uh, kernel source code directory so that we can start from where we've left off, you know,
so it's where we're instead of building the kernel configuration file from total scratch. Now we've
at least got, um, basically at least a system as good as what we've got already and we can just
uh, configure the new options. And to do that, you can simply type in make space old config.
Okay, so this will attempt to make a usable, uh, configuration file based on your old kernel,
but there will, there might be differences because obviously the new kernel will have perhaps new
new options. Maybe it will have removed certain options. You'll still have to configure, uh,
something probably, but like I say, it's a lot less work than starting over from scratch. And that's
a great way to do it, especially if you've never compiled a kernel before. That's a great starting
place. All right. So after you've gone through and basically it's just going to ask you a couple
of questions and you can usually type in question mark, uh, return that will give you sort of a clue
as to why it's asking you and what the significance of what it's asking you is. But, um, it's just
going to ask you questions about, you know, whether you need certain, um, certain things enabled,
like groups CPU scheduler, do you want that enabled? And it will have a, a yes or a no or a question
mark. And you can, the, the default option will be capitalized and where it might ask you to,
you know, whether you want to create deprecated, cis, fs files, um, just all these different questions
about like the new options that the newest kernel has available that your old configuration file
didn't have. If you don't know what it's asking you, the safest thing and, you know, read the help,
help the help screen, but also I guess the safest thing would typically be go with the default.
Once you're ready, once, once you've answered all the questions that it throws at you with the,
the make old config, you will want to then make menu config that will bring you into the main
configuration menu. You can navigate through this. It's an incursive screen. So it's, it's graphical,
a little bit low five, but it is a graphical interface. There's a lot of help files available
within that. And, uh, you can simply kind of go down to the, uh, load an alternate configuration
file option and hit return. And it will, it will load up that dot config, which, uh, obviously is,
is what we just renamed the configuration file too. And so this will use exactly what you've
configured to make the new, um, the new kernel configuration. It will give you some options
in, in terms of the, the many, many choices that it gives you. You can either build the choices,
the, the different aspects of the kernel into the kernel. Uh, you can make it a module so that you
can lay it, you, you can load it, you know, after the kernel is, is running, uh, or you can just not
include it. You don't build a certain, a certain option into the kernel. And it really depends on
what you need, what you think you need, uh, as to what, what you're going to do in each case.
If it's something that, um, you know, there's, there's options for like amateur radio, support,
things like that. Those kinds of things, you probably just don't need to build, but certain,
other things you're going to have to really kind of think about, think about your system,
and, you know, choose accordingly. At this point, you are ready to actually start the compile.
So you will type in make, be the image that is make beta z image with a capital i. And that
starts compiling the code. That could take a while depending on speed of your computer. Uh, and after
that's finished, you will type in make space modules, which obviously makes the, uh, the options that
you would chose to not build into the kernel, but build as modules. That'll do that. Now,
once that's finished, that won't take as long. Once that's finished, it's time to start moving
some files around. Now, the idea here, if you, it's pretty simple, if you think about it,
and you just have to kind of think about it because moving all these files, listening to me, say,
the paths of all these different files gets kind of confusing after a while. But if you think about
what's happening, you're basically taking those old kernel files like the VN Linus that represents
the old kernel and the system map that goes along with that old kernel. You're just going to rename
those so that for yourself, you know that that's the old kernel. And then you're going to move in
the new stuff that you've just done, like the bz image and the new system map, you're going to
move that into the boot directory because the boot directory is obviously what the boot loader
is going to need to boot up into a certain kernel. So the details of that would be MV, like move,
MV, space slash boot slash VM Linus, space slash boot slash VM Linus dot old or whatever,
whatever you want to name the old kernel so that you can recognize it as the old version.
Okay, so you've just moved the old kernel into a backup version of itself.
So take the new kernel and put that into the VM Linus. To do that, you'll type in cat,
space arch slash i386 slash boot slash bz image greater than sign space slash boot slash VM Linus.
So you're just taking everything out of bz image and sending it over into VM Linus.
The reason I'm giving the path arch slash i386 slash boot slash bz image is because that's
what it is on my computer. On yours, it might be arch slash x86 underscore 64 or something like that.
Just kind of depends. Just looking right where you are, the slash usr slash src slash Linux.
There's an arch directory there. And in that arch directory, you'll see architecture that you
have available to you. So now that you've moved the new kernel over to VM Linus, you'll need to
take the old system map and rename it so that you know that's your backup system map.
So again, it's in the space slash boot slash system dot map, space slash boot slash system dot map dot
old or whatever you want to call it. So you're just renaming the old system map to something
to denote that is the backup system map. Now you'll want to copy the system map that you've
just created while compiling your new kernel into the boot directory. And that is done quite
easily. CP space system dot map, space slash boot slash system dot map, easy enough. Now you'll
want to make modules underscore install that is make space modules underscore install. And that
takes care of all those modules, make sure that they're where they need to be. And you're pretty
much finished in terms of dealing with the kernel files and everything like that. The last thing
you need to do is configure your bootloader so that when you reboot your computer, you'll be able
to go into either the old or the new kernel. So if you're running Lilo as your bootloader,
you will open up in the text editor slash Etsy slash Lilo dot comp. And you'll take the existing
entry, which was probably auto generated by what you know when you were first installing your
distra. You'll take that old entry and you'll make a copy of it. And on the old one, you will
append, for instance, where it's pointing to VM Linus, you'll make that VM Linus dot old. And on
the new one, you'll leave that as it is because it's still pointing to VM Linus, which you've
just updated with your new kernel information. You will probably want to change the label as well,
otherwise it'll both say Linux. So make one say like Linux old and one Linux new or Linux dash
2.6.21 versus Linux 2.26, 2.6.25. Just something for you to recognize, which is the old kernel,
which is the new one. And since it is Lilo, you need to update it after you've finished editing it.
So to update Lilo, you just run slash S bin slash Lilo and that updates Lilo. If you're running
grub, you just open up in a text editor slash boot slash grub slash menu dot LST. And again,
copy the existing entry that was probably auto generated by your installer. Make the old one VM Linus
dot old and make the new one VM Linus and change the label so that you can tell them apart.
You don't need to update grub, it will update itself and you just reboot. And once you reboot,
it'll get to your bootloader and you can tell it to boot into the new kernel and take it for a test
drive, see if it works. Now if it doesn't work, never fear you've got that old kernel available to
you via your bootloader. So you can just reboot, go back into your old kernel and you're good to go,
you can try to recompile the new kernel and see if you can get it working properly. In my experience,
when you use your old config file, usually the new kernel just kind of works. But if not,
you know, just boot into the old one and try to recompile the new kernel. Remember before
recompiling the kernel, you'll want to type in make space MART proper so that it kind of starts
back from from ground zero that also deletes that little config file. So you'll need to recopy
the old config file from your your boot directory back over into the source code directory so
that you can try to reuse it. That's it for kernel compiling. Thanks for listening. Next time,
I'm going to cover compiling a kernel over a cluster network, a little bail wolf cluster. And in
the meantime, if you have ideas for hacker public radio, like episode ideas or cool tips or
tales of Linux adventures or hacking adventures that you want to relate, contact the admins
over at hackerpublicradio.org. This is obviously a show by the community for the community. So the
more contributors we have, the more variety we'll all have. And making an episode easy, it's fun,
so give it a shot. Thank you for listening to hacker public radio. HPR is sponsored by
caro.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of your community.

85
hpr_transcripts/hpr0088.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
Episode: 88
Title: HPR0088: Hiding and stripping program symbols
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0088/hpr0088.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:21:11
---
.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. I will be your host today,
a few texts and today we'll be talking about hiding and stripping symbols from programs.
The outline for today is talking about why you'd be interested in such a thing
as hiding and stripping symbols from programs. Then we'll talk about background knowledge
of what you need to know for it to all make sense. Then we'll talk about how you actually do it.
And then a couple tips and tricks when working with symbols and programs.
So why are you interested in symbols and programs in your computer and why do you care?
About hiding them and stripping them. First they can reduce the size of your program.
They can make it load faster, run faster, and in some cases it can prevent breakage.
So if you use computer it's important to you. Particularly it's important if you're a programmer
or if you're a package maintainer or just if you're interested in how your computer works
or even in some reverse engineering context is important to know about symbols in the programs.
So it's important to note that we're talking about programs here. We're talking about compiled programs,
programs compiled from source code as opposed to interpreted programs.
So interpreted programs you have human readable source code, high level source code commands that's read in.
And the program that is run is not run directly by the processor. There's actually another program
that interprets the commands, the interpreter. There's another interface between the high level source code
and how it gets fed to the processor. But compiled programs you start off with source code, human readable instructions and logic.
And that has to be compiled into instructions understandable by the processor.
So interpretive examples are Python or bash scripts and compiled languages such as C or C++ or Fortran or something like this.
And when you use a high level programming language like C or C++, one of the artifacts of the compilation process,
the process of compiling and linking and building your programs is that you get these symbols inside the files that you create.
And these symbols are human readable symbols for the functions and the classes that you have designed in your source code.
So if you have made any programs in a compiled language such as C or C++, you are probably already familiar with the symbol terminology.
You've come across it, I'm sure, in debugging. So often if you're doing debugging, you send a switch to the compiler that says include debugging symbols.
And what these debugging symbols are tags to the functions and classes that you create. So it will say, I have this function kickbutt in my program.
And when you include the debugging symbols that will have information of where the kickbutt program, what file it's created and what line number it is on, so that you can debug the code effectively.
The symbols are also important for understanding how libraries work. You have a library that you create and then you have another program that is going to call some functions or classes from that library.
And how you call them, you name them according to the human readable symbol name when you are calling them in your code.
And so of course those names have to exist in the library in some state and those are the symbols in the libraries.
One of the benefits of hiding symbols is that there are reduced conflicts in the symbol names of your libraries.
So you hide symbols that do not need to be available to the user of the library. That way if two libraries have the same function or a function with the same name that might do different things, there's not a conflict there and you don't have problems of calling the wrong function, for example.
The long and short of it is that there are symbols in compiled object files and these symbols are an artifact of the high level source code, the human readable function names and class names.
So the idea is that if you're not doing debugging, you don't include debugging symbols. And if you have a library with functions that you do not intend to be called by the user's program or other libraries, then you do not have those symbols available.
And when you do not have these symbols available, the file size is much, much smaller in some cases and that means it's faster to load the file.
It takes a long time to read files from the hard disk and it takes up less space on the hard disk and in some cases with shared libraries, your library can run much faster.
So how do you hide and strip symbols from your compiled object files?
In libraries, you have to have some way of defining which functions and classes you want made available to the user of the library.
You have to define your API, if you were.
This cannot be done automatically by the compiler because the compiler has no way of knowing which functions and classes you intend on making available in the future and using in the future.
So there are two basic ways of defining the API.
The first way is in source where you modify your function definitions so that the compiler can understand which functions and classes you want made available.
There are different ways of doing this depending on the compiler. For example, for the windows, visual compiler, there is a syntax containing underscore, underscore, dll, spec, dll, import or dll.
For the GNUC compiler, there is something that looks like attribute visibility hidden or attribute visibility default.
By having these in your function declarations, you can define which functions you want to be hidden and which functions you want to be visible.
So the hidden ones, you can strip away and hide away.
GCC also has a good way of doing things where you can hide functions by default using the dash f visibility equals hidden switch to the compiler.
And then just to find which functions you want to be available for calling.
You can do that either with the declaration at each function or you can do it with a pound pragmat gcc visibility command.
The second way of defining which functions and classes you want to be kept inside the library is with a linker.
You can create a linker script and you can pass that to the linker that contains the definitions of the functions you want to be local and functions you want to be external.
For more information on hiding with the compiler, see the gcc man page and the f visibility switch section or there will be some other links in the show notes.
For more information on using the linker to change the symbols available, see the info page on the LD command.
I prefer to use the in source method because it's one less thing to think about.
And for your binary applications, you can also remove the symbols.
You can remove the symbols with a command called strip in Linux or you can do it by sending commands to the linker such as the dash s switch to the LD linker in Linux.
Remember, you can send commands to the linker through the pile or such as gcc with the dash capital W lorscore L.
So it would be dash capital W lorscore L comma dash lorscore s.
So some tips and tricks for working with symbols.
When you're going through your source code and figuring out which functions to make available and which to hide, be careful about your headers.
So you include headers of programs and they may not have had that logic built into them about which programs may be available.
And they, you may hide things that you may not want to have hidden.
Also watch out for exception classes.
Even if you're not fooling around with hiding symbols or stripping symbols, this can be a gotcha in C or C++.
This is how I came across all this jazz about hiding and stripping symbols.
There are some inherited exception classes in the standard library who are not visible.
And even if you throw them during your program, everything will compile fine but it will not run correctly.
And this has to do with visibility problems.
Remember that reverse engineering is made easier by having these human readable symbols in your program.
A lot more easier if you have debugging symbols in the program but non debugging symbols are useful too if you want to do reverse engineering.
So hide and strip your symbols if you're worried about people reverse engineering your applications or try to get a version of an application that has been compiled with debug symbols if you want to try reverse engineering on it.
Finally the NM application in Linux will show you all the symbols within an objects file.
So that's very useful in understanding what's going on.
Thank you for listening. Please tune in next time for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to CARO.ENC for all of us here.
Thank you.

230
hpr_transcripts/hpr0089.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,230 @@
Episode: 89
Title: HPR0089: Notacon Wrapup
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0089/hpr0089.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:22:01
---
.
This is HackerPublicRadio, today your hosts are DOSMAN and Shane and we're going to talk
a little bit about what happened at Nauticon this year, what we did for the event and some
other stuff, lockpicking, other stuff that we did also.
Some real famous artwork that totally didn't get voted up, but it should have been.
Yes, George had some tremendous artwork, gosh, I don't even think I could describe it.
I won't even try, maybe we can post it in the show, no, there we go, that would be perfect.
Yeah, so I guess Nauticon happened the first week in April this year.
We will Shane did a bunch of work leading up for the froggy and tiger, asked us if we
were going to be doing the lockpicking pogo to this year and we kind of got together and
said, yeah, okay, and what all did you do for the pogo to this year?
Well, the design idea started last year, actually, while I was at DevCon's lockpicking
village, and I thought, wow, this is going to be a royal pain if somebody comes along
like what happened at Nauticon this year and comes along and just attacks a lock with
such fury that they break it immediately.
And you know, how are they going to really change that out?
So when I ended up moving out here and started actually being a part of a group and all,
I looked at designing something that would be modular, that would vaguely travel well
and that could have stuff easily changed out on it.
So being that I spent a lot of time in Japan, I started out by making some Tori gates,
which are the gates that you see in front of most temples.
And I took those, I made, I made wall pieces that go in the centerpiece, there's two slats
per gate, and those are held in with, with eye bolts, and you just yank the eye bolts
out and you can swap those planks out pretty much however you want to do that.
And on the eye bolts, we had padlocks and then the walls themselves, there were three
locks each.
And the wall is kind of progressed from really easy to sort of easy to nobody opened any
lock on this wall.
And you know, we were cool, we managed to open up one of the locks on the wall, but not
while I was actually in the wall.
And then there was another lock that everybody was convinced was broken, but I opened it,
so it's not broken.
It's still there, too.
Boom, it's open.
Yeah, the thing you've been working on for the last two hours, sorry about you.
It works.
Yeah, we're really sorry if you're listening, but that was funny.
I did manage to pull out about four tons of dust that came off of all the pins, so they
probably don't really look like pins inside of there anymore, was everybody attacking
them.
Yes, yes.
A lot of good damage on the locks.
Gosh, they've got pictures up.
Yes, yes, on the Bloomington Fools website, we of course are a locks board group, this
fraternal order of locks board.
And of course, based out of the city of Bloomington, Indiana, we have BloomingtonFools.org and
we've got a couple photos up there.
You can also just go to Flickr and look up for a Nodicon 5 2008 photos.
Make sure you skip that one guy that took a bunch of scenery pictures and tagged it with
Nodicon.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Dush.
So yeah, yeah, so you spent a lot of time on this leading up to Nodicon.
I spent a lot of time on it on my weekends and everything.
It's stained and it's rubbed with Dutch oil and I made some shingles and stuff like that.
But I don't know, it was a fun project for me.
It was much more fun than standing down on my kitchen cabinets and restaining those.
But the part that really we were showing out for is because Dotsman gave a great and
well-received talk.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I actually gave a talk.
This was my first con that I've actually given a talk at and I talked about.
My talk was entitled something like mechanic or lockpicking into the new frontier for
mechanical to electronic locks or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Something like that.
And I talked basically a basic primer on lockpicking and then went into some high security
locks and then talked about some electronic lock systems that I've built devices for that
unlock them and talked about some things I'd like to get my hands on like cyber lock.
If anyone has a cyber lock, I'd love to get ahold of any Dotsman at packets nippers.org
and I'll reimburse you handsomely or at least in some form or fashion.
So anyway, that seemed to be well-received and that was really fun getting to do that
and get to talk to some of the people that I first saw a presentation on lockpicking
from that came up and you know gave me a congrats on all that like Jimmy Chan and Colonel
Panic and Idal, other folks.
So some of the other stuff leading up to NaughtyCon, George and Zach put in a lot of time working
on some music for the block party.
We made that reference about George's artworks, stunning the audience.
He's had a wow photos submission and that was a very the the tamest picture of his and it really did
stun everybody.
I don't think that I mean everybody had a wisecrack for everything else but this because
really nothing really top the wisecrack that was the artwork in the first place.
Yes, yes and for those I guess I should back up a little bit.
For those that might not be aware, for the last two years now Jason Scott and Radman
have been hosting something called Block Party at NaughtyCon.
It's a part of the same event and it's basically a hair sort of an homage to the old demo
scene and they have all kinds of entries you could do write a program that does visual
and audio stuff on your Commodore or on something using the latest you know programming
framework for X86 architecture or whatever you want to program for and then there's also
there were like photography, compos, music, different types of music, eight-bit, streaming
music, modern, electronic but the programming was the big deal with that.
There was really some awesome stuff out there I was really good to see a lot of people
turn out and a lot of people just throw their stuff out there you know whether or not it
was a centaur with a goatee face or if it was somebody's great picture that they had
taken or if it was just some crazy music that was developed it's that type of thing is
just way beyond me you know I can stick to something that's about it.
And there were some great people from that scene there.
Some of the people I never heard of but a couple of them I was familiar with like a
trickster who did the full motion video on an XT thing that makes makes slash odd or some
side every every couple of months.
He had another entry this year there was Jerry Ellsworth who I think is really cool that
it was fairly well known in the Commodore scene for well designing her own Commodore board
using FPGA's and other equipment just doing lots of cool stuff with Commodore she designed
the D TV Commodore game joystick for home shopping network which was basically a Commodore
inside a joystick one of those type of game systems and oh yeah if you open it up there's
like you know a place where you can solder and keyboard jack and all that kind of stuff
on there so it's sort of like a sort of hiding and sneaking and modern Commodore out to
the masses and for the tinkers that want to mess with them.
So anyway lots of cool people lots of good things out there going on.
So I guess to go back into the lock picking aspect deviant olem of tool was there also
in the lock picking pagoda and was just doing a kickass job with the Gringo Warrior and Gringo
were I don't you want to talk about that a little bit? I can. Gringo Warrior is essentially
a scenario challenge that finds you getting down to Tijuana with fine Dan Kaminsky and waking
up being harassed by people that may or may not be law enforcement but your handcuffed
in a room and they want your money and they're going to give you a little while to think
about it. So in the process they neglected to take your lock picks away from you. So the
scenario starts out with you and handcuffs and there are see there's four other positions
that you have to go through that we don't necessarily have to go through them all but you've
got a door lock you need to pick then there is a cabinet lock and then a dead bolt and
after that you have to go through a car lock and the cabinet and the car lock are optional
as far as how far you get away but this is all scored on cool points and originality
and difficulty as there's three sets of locks that you can choose from at each station.
It's a very strong scoring system for various levels depending on how you start out with
the handcuffs there's three or four different positions you can start out with and the more
difficult position you start out and get you more points and it's also a five minute you have
five minutes to do this entire course so time is also a factor as well as creativity and you know
how difficult of each lock that you pick. Neither of us won. We tried but there was a guy
he was a cool guy that was hanging out at the lock picking pagoda last year not a con 2007
Dave Klingman and he flew through the course in like a minute and a half or a minute. He went
through he had his handcuffs I think he had him behind his back do you do double lock behind
his back or just behind his back. I don't know it was at least behind his back it was behind his
back I can't remember if they were double locked or not but he got out of that and went through all
the more difficult locks nobody actually went through the most difficult door lock or through
the most difficult padlock because it was a new lock that isn't quite the same but I'm not going
to talk about that one too much. Yeah yeah I don't know when I did it let's see my first run I made
it in three minutes and one second I believe and I just did the medium locks all the way across
I may have done one hard lock maybe the cabinet lock yeah you would be pretty good and I for early
on I was doing pretty good I think I had 404 points 404 yeah you but obviously since I was giving
a talk on lock picking it was definitely necessary to disqualify me from the prize which I think
quite reasonable I was just happy that since I was giving a talk on picking I I didn't suck it
up on the corners oh what were the prizes that Deviant had oh man I cannot remember the artist name
but he had two really cool prints from a British artist I want to say if I'm wrong on any of this
don't blame me but there were some really cool shots from a graffiti artist that that he just
kind of transposed into other situations one of them was a one of the billions of cameras that's
around London it was pointed at a wall and he had spray painted what are you looking at on the wall
that was pretty good having been through he threw a couple of times and seen myself way too often
um yeah it's just it's just creepy I'm only about through Glasgow it's the other
airport I think I went through the other one and I was rushed all the way through so I didn't
get chance to check out the security cameras or do anything that are you're not missing anything
it's all on tape somewhere if you want to see it again I'm sure sure I'm sure I'll be
imprisoned at some point for something and I'll get to see all this that is not a good admission
of any kind of guilt or whatsoever so yeah so gosh not a con was a blast um Shane was a lock
picking pagoda room pretty much the entire weekend yeah I have no idea actually what happened
not a con aside from what three of them I did go see the block party judging but that's because
it was at three in the morning and everybody else wanted to as well the first night we went back
to go make sure that nobody thought that it would be funny to pick the lock to the pagoda room and
steal all of our stuff and yeah we had the room open for about five minutes and then the room was
full again so we we stayed there for another three or four hours yeah yeah miss some cool people in
that time that was uh definitely as kind of nice and relaxed there but uh finally around two
thirty or three we had just had to shut it down we it was it was a quite a long Friday uh but it
was definitely cool um and oh yeah um speaking of the three a.m. demo awards Jason Scott if you're
listening I'd really like to see the demos because I think I was way too intoxicated at that point
I just cannot remember any of the demos I saw some photos that seemed to possibly jog some
memories for me on flicker but no video of that so yeah I don't remember any of the demos that I
saw I just remember um when the people won and thinking hmm I think I saw that but yeah after
afterwards we had conversations about that and um none of us seemed to be able to remember
what exactly happened yeah yeah so so demo scene dot us is the block party site so at some point
they're they're supposed to be posting the uh uh all the demos all the entries for all the
compos on there so hopefully soon it's not like Jason Scott's not busy or anything making
two or documentary's and running block party and whatever else he does so what like we like we
all are busy or something get on it so gosh let's see we saw the award ceremony Sunday uh
saw heck I don't know will happen wow I don't uh some some guy ran into my car oh yeah that was
nice that was great um it's not not very hacker-esque but I will tell you that some people are
still dumb enough to put their socials on their on their driver's license so guy in the big white
Lincoln don't know what to tell you yeah oh man oh yeah well I didn't have to drive this year
I suppose but anyway I'll go in that um yeah so Zach and George did a we see for the the packet
team packet sniffers entry uh the the song that Zach and George made and I had a small contribution
towards um with a little voiceover that I did came in second place for the the music entry
and uh so that was really fun and a lot very cool and who won first place on that I have no idea
was that one that uh fat man wonder was that a different one probably fat man and Jerry
yeah I know uh there was one that the fat man did win and well you know some people do have a certain
amount of experience over others and considering he was showing off all the professional stuff he
does for like big budget movies are relatively big budget movies that's movies with a budget
movies with a budget absolutely that's not too unexpected but
oh all right so I guess uh I don't know there's not a whole lot more I guess I have that we have
to talk about it not a con there are lots of things that went on oh yeah
anyone if you if you went to not a con and you saw the person dancing around
um and the clean suit um I'll drop some docs on Zach that that was Zach by the way
if you didn't know that I all the photos I saw of that they said huh some guy in a clean suit we
have no idea who it was that yeah he needs credit for that I've never seen somebody bring so many
costumes to one event before that was quite intrigued go figure no comment I'm sorry Zach
you'll be able to defend yourself in another episode of hacker public radio here um I'm sure
so future stuff uh next year's not a con I don't know what'll happen but we might have bigger
and even better things going on we are we uh started working on our plans for our next
device that we're gonna unveil more than likely a not a con next year uh for a mixed media
challenge uh we're also thinking to have some speed picking competitions and a few other things
added to the pickup because it was just overwhelming how many people showed up in the first place
so uh please come back again yes we won't sell out of everything this time I think I think uh
the future is very very promising for lock picking and not a con so um I don't know if there's
anything else you can think of I think we go ahead and start wrapping up this episode yeah I
know that we're gonna uh work on filming the uh yes the re-installation of the Ocho
into my house so yes we have a new victim who's willing to uh put up the uh the Ocho at his place
since we had to take it down for since Zach moved away um which uh one of the if you're not
familiar with that one of the earlier episodes of hacker public radio we we discussed the Ocho
in part 15 a.m. broadcasting um I you should just probably you could search for part 15 that'll
find it um that's what I did you know so that's about it eventually there's gonna be another
package in every episode whether does man likes it or not yeah yeah uh we'll we'll I don't know
we've been saying it for years but I think it might become a reality this time we've got some
some enthusiasm again to I get some stuff going and uh we're gonna what we'll have in episode six
sometime in the relatively near future that means in the next year yeah um all right well I
guess uh I've been Dawesman I'm Shane and uh this is a hacker public radio and always remember if
you want to host an episode uh just go to the hacker public radio dot org site and you can get a
hold of uh enigma or someone there that you so you can go ahead and you know record an episode get
it submitted uh we'll get you hooked up um anyone can contribute content it's a fun way to build your
your personal speaking skills and other just talking about cool stuff that other technologists
and hackers might like so I so I guess that's it and I'm sorry that's about it
and we'll talk to you next time thank you for listening to hacker public radio
hpr sponsored by caro dot net so head on over to caro dot anything for all of us

314
hpr_transcripts/hpr0090.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,314 @@
Episode: 90
Title: HPR0090: Ironman
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0090/hpr0090.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:22:55
---
.
.
Welcome back to another thrilling, exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Peter Nicolitis, and joining me is my good friend and host of the Fresh Ubuntu
podcast, Harlem.
How are you doing?
Good.
Good, Peter.
All right.
Thanks for joining me today.
Hey, no problem.
I heard you were talking about Iron Man, and since Iron Man is coming out, I wanted
to participate as well.
That's awesome.
Yes.
As Harlem said, by the time you're listening to this, today is the debut of the brand new
Iron Man live-action movie starring Robert Downey Jr.
And I thought that it would be appropriate to just have a little chat about Iron Man.
So for those of you who are listening to HPR, who are geeky enough to listen to it,
but not know who Iron Man is, shame on you.
Now that I've got that out of the way, though, we're going to take a little time and educate
you as to who and or what Iron Man is, and why I like him so much.
Iron Man has always been one of my favorite superheroes, and I just thought he was really
cool.
He's really powerful.
He's definitely one of them.
I don't know if he's one of the most powerful, but he's rather powerful in the Marvel universe.
He was a Marvel comic book.
And he was a founding member of the Avengers, who are, you know, what, Earth's mightiest
heroes.
I think that's their tagline.
But Iron Man is, his secret identity is Anthony Edward Stark, he goes by Tony, Tony Stark,
who is a multi-billionaire, and he owns and operates this mega-conglomerate corporation
called Stark Enterprises.
Right.
So, I've rambled a little bit, oh, Stark Industries, Interesting Industries, thank you, thank
you.
So, I've rambled a little bit about him.
Why don't you just take over, tell us a little bit about Iron Man, Harlem, anything
you like?
Well, what particularly drew me to Iron Man is that this guy is just an ordinary guy.
He doesn't have any special powers, he's not ultra-fast or anything like that.
He's just a smart guy, and on top of that, he's got some pretty good business sense.
So, that's what draws, I think a lot of the folks is that they can, they as ordinary
people, and at least this is what I was thinking, is that technology can make us better, you
know what I mean?
Yeah.
That's what sort of drew me to this guy, so, I love the, I also love the way his suit of
armor has evolved from the very beginnings back in the, you know, the very early days
where it was just this big dark gray piece of metal, not very well form fitting, to what
it is now, a nicely designed, it looks like a some really strange type of alloy, and
that can move with your skin and that kind of stuff, so, I love the evolution of that
kind of thing.
Absolutely.
Can I jump in for a second there?
The Iron Man first appeared, he was created by like so many other Marvel Comics characters
created by Stan Lee in 19, actually I shouldn't say not just Stan Lee, but also Stan Lee, Larry
Lieber, and artists by Don Heck and also with Jack Kirby, so they all collaborated and
made Iron Man in 1963, so, you know, Iron Man's been around for 45 years now, so, a long
time.
And interesting, you think about that, but it's about time that they made a movie of him,
you know, I mean, it's absolutely, you know, you keep herring it about it, you know,
I've heard that they were going to do an Iron Man movie 10 years ago, and I keep waiting
and waiting and waiting, and I thought, finally, we have finally done it, so, anyway, just
my two cents in.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Continue where you were going.
I just wanted to get that origin little tidbit in there.
Yeah.
So, for years and years, I've been waiting for, you know, a real good Iron Man movie, and
you hear about it for years and years and years from Hollywood, and I'm hoping this
movie doesn't disappoint, doesn't disappoint me.
Yeah.
I've been disappointed by a lot of these franchise superhero movies, most notably Batman.
The first one was pretty good, the very first one with Michael Keaton.
In 1989.
Right.
And then afterwards, you know, the rest of them just got worse and worse and worse, and
then-
Absolutely.
And not to get off topic here, but it's since gotten much better with Christian
Bale.
Absolutely.
I was going to say that Batman begins stuff, but that's relevant though, because actually,
I was going to bring in Batman into this discussion, because I think Batman and Iron Man actually
have a lot of things in common, and, you know, they both are, well, for starters, they're
both, you know, multi-billionaire defense contractors, right?
They both use technology to enhance themselves, although Batman, you know, I guess, he's
dependent on technology, I think, to a lesser degree, you know, because he also epitomizes
or represents like the epitome of human potential, and, you know, like what a human can do,
whereas, you know, and they're both really, really smart.
I'm not sure, I've seen a ranking somewhere, but I'm pretty sure they're both in like
the top, you know, four or five, as far as intelligence goes, and in their respective
fictional universes, you know, on their worlds anyway.
You know, because Batman is, you know, he's definitely outsmarted Lex Luthor before, and
he's generally the smartest in, you know, in DC universe.
And, you know, Iron Man, I think, you know, he's on Tony Stark, is in league with Reed
Richards and Dr. Doom and Marvel Comics side, so.
But, you know, the thing is different is Iron Man, you know, he, I think he utilizes the
technology a lot more.
I mean, he wears the thing, but he's also dependent on it.
I don't know if this is true in the current scheme, because I, I, I, I haven't been buying
Iron Man comics for several years now, but he originally created the armor to keep
him alive, right?
Yes, absolutely.
And that, that's, yeah, and that was the whole, I think that's how it all came about,
is that he went over to, because of his, well, you know, his job, he went over to a place
and he got kidnapped, apparently, and, well, it was Vietnam, I think originally, wasn't
it?
Yeah, I think it was.
You know, it was Vietnam originally, because that was the setting at the time they, the,
the original comic was in, you know, in the 60s, and they wanted to play off of what was
going on, which is kind of a neat little microcosm about, about comic books, is that it's
sort of a, you know, it's a pop culture look at what's going on at the time.
And that's the kind of neat thing about comic books.
Yeah.
Anyway.
It is.
And I guess in the movie, then what it, it starts out in, is an Iraq or Afghanistan, I think
it's Afghanistan.
Afghanistan now.
Yeah.
So it updated again to be Afghanistan, which is what it says in the wiki here in wiki
pdf.
And a lot of the, the, the factoids and facts that we're pulling out today were, we're,
we're pulling out of the wiki pdf article on Iron Man, which is pretty cool.
So he's, he's a multi billionaire.
We've established that.
Right.
And he, so this is the movie is starting over, okay, so we're, it's the movie starting
in Afghanistan.
Right.
That's, that's something that they definitely, they do with comics a lot because, I mean,
you know, right now, I guess it's just who wants to read about a superhero who was formed
in fiat non, right?
That's just so pass A.
Right.
So they even, cliche, exactly.
Right.
So if, so they, they, they, they do things like that to keep things fresh.
And I know like, they did that with Magneto when they did the, the first X-Men movie several
years ago now, he was a child in the concentration camps in World War II.
But I guess I forget how old he was when they originally introduced him in the comic book.
I think, I don't remember if he was in, you know, like in his 20s or if he was, you
know, or 30s or whatnot, but he was a lot older.
So, you know, if they want to keep Magneto around, they're going to have to get rid of that
whole thing.
And unfortunately, that's a, you know, a lot of ties into his, his past and stuff.
I'd be curious, I guess, you know, it's not, not so critical with Tony Stark, they can
just take him out of one war and drop him into another.
So, you know, I guess that's a little to the story of writers advantages, but, right.
But so what are some of the things that the Iron Man armor, let's Iron Man do?
Well, fly for one thing, and that's great.
The, the, the first and foremost thing that pops out of my head is that the guy can fly.
The coolest thing to me and other than, well, it's a suit of armor and it's strong
and stuff and, and impenetrable, the thing that stands out the most is that the, the guy
can fly and that's kind of cool.
Yep.
I think that's of any superpower, I would, I would think that flying would be probably
one of the top two things that I would want to have.
Yeah.
It's up there.
It's definitely up there.
Actually, I just remember I got a little bit off topic.
I wanted to also say that that the Iron Man suit, you know, was designed to keep him alive
because he was over in the war.
It was originally in Vietnam, but I forget exactly what happens, but he, you know, gets
he's near an explosion and some shrapnel goes into his chest and starts like working
its way to his heart, right?
Right.
Exactly.
That's what, that's exactly what happens.
Some shrapnel is in there and then, um, uh, well, well, there's, there's conflicting
things that I'm thinking of.
It's been a long time since I've read the origin, but, um, apparently he's got so long to,
to make this, this, uh, uh, uh, pacemaker, I suppose you can call it and, um, uh, or, or
a weapon and he chooses to, to live and make a pacemaker and, um, and a weapon and a weapon
makes himself into the weapon.
That's right.
But, yeah, um, so, yeah, he's got, like you said, the first off, he can fly, he's in
a big suit of armor.
And that's another thing too, is if you've never, have you ever worn any sort of armor?
I mean, any sort of like padding or anything like that?
Uh, like a, like football padding, yes.
Yeah, okay.
I mean, you, you think about it, it's kind of cool.
If you've never put on any sort of armor, like, you know, for martial arts sparring or
just, you know, mountain biking gear or football, it's kind of cool.
Try it out sometime.
It immediately, you know, you feel tougher, you know, you feel less vulnerable when, like,
you can take more.
I know I do it when I'm mountain bike.
Um, you know, if I go out with my padding on, I am a lot more comfortable, you know,
with like the risks that I take mountain biking than I am without it, you know, right.
And let me add, the coolest thing to is the helmet, yeah, and it could be any old
helmet, you know, football players wear the helmet, but like my kids, we'll see guys
on motorcycles with these fancy helmets on and, and they will automatically think that
those guys are superheroes, you know, and it's really, it's, it's pretty cool, though.
Yeah, but you're right, you feel in, you know, almost invulnerable in one of those things.
And, and just imagine what it would be like if you were wearing the Ironman suit, though.
Exactly.
So, I mean, it makes him pretty much invulnerable to, you know, unless he's dealing with some
other super high tech villain or, you know, super powered, super, super powered villain, Ironman's
pretty darn tough.
Yep.
And, uh, he's it, he is.
He's super strong, right?
The, the power armor gives him super strength.
That's right.
Um, and he's, his famous attack is the repulsar race, you know, that shoot out of the,
out of his gauntlets.
And, um, I get what I think the, the chest beam, though, had a different, it wasn't that,
like, the uni beam, I think that was what it used to be called.
But he has a, another, you know, like laser type thing out of his chest also.
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure about that.
I thought it was about the same as the, the pulse bolts.
Oh, pulse bolts, those came later.
Pulse bolts, pulse bolts came around in the, uh, the white and red armor, I believe.
Oh, okay.
And that was right around the time when he was, uh, after he had lost stark
industries to Obadaya stain and, you know, stain industries that basically became.
And, uh, so he built the new armor.
And that's one of the things you've mentioned that, you know, it started out as this big clunky,
he basically looked like a walking potbelly stove.
Right.
That's how I think of him.
And, yeah, you know, and then, um, somebody, uh, I, I, I've read the early, uh, Iron Man comics.
And, um, you know, someone, I guess he was talking to his girlfriend or wife or whatever.
And they said, oh, you know, you know, he, he's a good guy, but he looks so scary.
And, you know, if he, if only he was like a shining night.
So he goes and he paints his armor gold.
Right.
And it was a still stain, you know, giant.
So he looked like a big giant yellow potbelly stove.
Walking around and then over time, you know, like you said, it slimmed down, you know,
the, the armor got thinner and, uh, you know, nowadays, he doesn't look much bigger.
Depending on like what, what timeline you're reading or what continuity it is, uh, you know,
sometimes the armor doesn't look much larger than a man at all.
It looks like it's paper thin, you know.
Right.
Exactly.
But, um, he's gone through various incarnations.
And, uh, when he, uh, he basically added red to the, uh, the suit after a while.
So he went from like gold, uh, I'm sorry, like, you know, steel, gray steel,
to gold, to gold and red.
And that was the color scheme that he stuck with for the longest time.
And then I forget when it was, but, um, it's sometimes, uh, during the, the storyline involved,
involving Obadiastane, who was the bad guy in the movie, the iron monger.
Uh, he changed it and turned it to, um, white and red.
And added a bunch of new weapons at that time.
And that's where the pulse bolts came in.
So, you know, the repulsor rays are basically jacked up a notch or two.
And, uh, you know, he became even more powerful.
And that was one of the interesting things that I think Iron Man represents an interesting,
um, escalation, you know, in, in power, in the power struggle between the villains and heroes.
And again, with Batman, you know, you sort of saw this when, um, when Bruce Wayne had his
back broken and, uh, asriel became Batman for a while in the Batman continuity.
Right.
Uh, he was so much more powerful, you know, just physical power because of the, the armor
that that guy wore, that, um, you know, for the first few episodes or first few issues,
he's just walking around Gotham City, cleaning house, you know, because nobody could lift a
finger to him because he was just so much tougher. But then the bad guy started to get tougher too,
you know, right, right.
But, uh, but anyway, so Iron Man, you know, got stronger and more powerful.
And, uh, he also evolved into a gray and white suit at one point called the war machine.
And then, uh, I forget exactly what happened, but he ended up giving that armor to his sidekick,
Jim Rhodes.
Uh, do you remember Rody?
Yes, I do.
So Rody became a war machine and I guess they had a falling out at one point.
And, um, you know, he kept the armor and they split off.
And I forget who went where, but, uh, I think that he went and stayed with the West Coast
Avengers for a while. I don't remember the West Coast Avengers period of Marvel comics was kind
of a low point for me. So, but, uh, but Jim Rhodes, um, you know, he was what he starts pilot,
chauffeur, bodyguard, confidante, yeah, all of those things. And, uh, he plays, he's in the role in
the, um, in the movie as well, along with a couple of other, um, you know, characters from the,
from the, uh, the comics. So, um, you know, that's, that's, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Do you have anything else we should talk about to, you know, give folks an idea of who Iron Man is?
I think the, the best thing is really to go see the movie and get, again, get reacquainted with,
with, uh, Iron Man and the whole comic book universe. Um, other than that, all I remember is
that Tony Stark was kind of a jerk. I was just, yes. And also an alcoholic. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
That's right. You're right. He was an alcoholic and a jerk. Yep. He was kind of a jerk. And
they, the, the comic was one of the, you know, they did dive into that. They dealt a lot with
substance abuse and alcoholism. Uh-huh. And that was an interesting thing, especially like in the
70s and 80s and stuff where, um, you know, a lot of comics did that. Well, not a lot, but, but
some did. They, you know, dived into real, you know, social issues at the time, human, human issues,
human exactly. And, and that's, again, like you said, you know, underneath all that, you know,
that golden yellow armor there, it's just a guy. Right. And that's perhaps that, that's what they
were trying to go for. There's, there's this outer armor that we all have, you know, a mask,
so to speak, but inside where are these human people with, with, uh, weaknesses and, uh,
character flaws and that kind of stuff. So, yep. Perhaps that's where they, they wanted us to,
to look at the dichotomy of the, uh, the human nature, you know. Well, we could have to get
on like, yeah. But I think we did a good little overview of Iron Man. Again, the ultimate, uh,
techie, um, you know, tech, tech hacker hero, in my opinion. So, yeah, I agree. And if you
haven't seen the trailers there, out now, by the time you hear this episode, obviously, um,
you know, the, the movie will be out now too. Yep. Um, but, um, I thought from, from the trailers
that I've seen, they looked really good. Um, you know, Robert Downey Jr. is playing Tony Stark,
and who's better to play an alcoholic than, you know, someone who's got substance abuse issues,
right? That's right. You know, I think, I think it's going to work out really well.
I think so too. I can't wait for the movie. And, um, I know my kids can't. My, uh, I got kids who
already are begging me to see it. So we'll be out there. Well, Randy, uh, Randy knows,
we're the, the knows, uh, from Fresh Ubuntu, Colley and Fame. And I will be, uh, connecting
sometime on Saturday to talk about the movie. So, uh, I'll look for you too if you want to
join in and we can, uh, you know, do a little roundtable discussion on it.
Sounds good. All right. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to my
National Public Radio. HBR is sponsored by Carol.net. So head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-C for all the

198
hpr_transcripts/hpr0091.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,198 @@
Episode: 91
Title: HPR0091: Hosts File
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0091/hpr0091.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:23:09
---
Outro Music
Welcome to this episode of Hacker Public Radio, this is Zokien and I'll be your host
for today.
I'm going to be talking about the host's file, but before I can do that, I've got to
explain a little bit about DNS and the internet and how it works roughly.
Every computer has been given a unique number or IP address.
Think of this as a phone number.
For the purposes of this analogy, imagine that you always have to enter the area code.
Now to get to another computer you need a CypHS or phone number, otherwise you can't
talk to it.
I mean, if you've got the phone, you need to know the phone number because otherwise
you don't dial it.
Now what you can do is phone the yellow pages up and ask to be put through to someone.
So there is this yellow pages containing everyone's name and number.
If you want to phone Google, you just look them up in the yellow pages.
However, instead of this being your local yellow pages because the numbers change too
quickly for that to work, you can actually phone another number up first for the operator
if you will.
And they will give you the phone number for Google.
Now in actuality, you don't need to use the yellow pages because the computer does this
for you.
You type in google.com and it looks up the phone number and dials it.
You can put the phone number in direct vote for a quick demonstration.
If you open up a command line or terminal in Windows, the Windows key and R should bring
up a run program dialog if not start run.
You can enter CMD if you're on Vista or XP in 2000.
I think it is or command if you're on 95 and 98.
Click OK and it will open up the terminal and in Linux, it depends on the Windows manager
and distro and whatever you're on.
I'm sure you probably know how to do that just open up a terminal or be under there somewhere.
So in the Windows, it's just open up.
You have to have a ping, it's P-I-N-G, Papa, India, November, Gulf, then it's space www.google.com
and press Enter and it will run something and tell you something back, something like
ping www.google.com, open brackets 208.67.219.231, close brackets and then a certain amount
of data, bytes of data and percentage that it worked and didn't work.
If you're on Linux, it will probably keep running forever so you need to control C out
of this.
Now the number there 208.67.219.231 is the phone number of Google.
Well, one of the phone numbers.
They have lots of people phoning, so they have several phone numbers.
But you open up the web browser and Firefox or whatever you use and enter 208.67.219.231
or whatever number you just found out in the address bar and hit Enter and hey, press
don't, it loads Google app.
You type the number into the computer, you don't have to look it up.
You can do this with any page you want, in fact.
But what's the point because phone numbers change, it's all dynamic.
You can pay for static IP addresses but it's normally much more expensive.
So people use like dns.com and software if they want to do stuff like that, but there's
no real point.
Your IP address is changed, so there's no point as you remember that, you just remember
Google.
That's the whole point of it.
It's designed to be human readable, Google.com is a lot easier to remember than 208.67.
Whatever the number was, see you've forgotten already, 208.67.219.231.
I've got it written in front of me that's the only reason I know.
Google.com, everyone can remember that.
So the whole dns thing is basically a yellow page is looking up computer rest of the phone
numbers for them.
This is a huge simplification if you actually know a lot more about dns and want to talk
about it, feel free to do your own hack public radio episode.
But that's basically enough for my purposes to explain the hosts file here.
The host file is a bit like a piece of paper you have next to the phone, where you write
phone numbers down.
Now you can write any phone number you want, you can write the wrong phone number.
This becomes important in a moment.
When you try and go to a website, instead of phoning yellow pages, you look up on the
bit of paper first.
You look up on the host file.
Once we're talking about yellow pages actually, let's talk about other people's frameworks.
There are several copies of the dns records around this, like one master copy, but it's spread
out to, I think it's five other master servers around, I think it's five anyway.
But there is a certain number of master records around on the internet.
If you actually took these out, the internet would pretty much die, but that's another story.
There are the master ones, but there are also local copies, which the ISPs normally hit
their own copies, so whichever ISPs you use, they have their own copy.
If you go into the network settings, you will be able to see that there will be a dns settings,
a dns server, one dns server, two dns server, three and so on.
That'll be your local ISPs.
You can use other ones, one common one, for example, is open dns, which I will link to
in the show notes.
They have several choices of phone books you can use, in fact, they have a child phone
click one.
For example, you can set up on your kid's machine, it went in and go to any porn sites.
I know.
Depressing.
Stopping porn off the internet.
They also do other things.
They block sites that they think are spammers, for example, that lots of people complain
about.
So you can stop the machine getting hacked, which is pretty cool, and I do actually use
open dns myself.
I didn't set it up on my machine, though, I got my machine to point to the router, or
router, if you're American.
So my computer, the wireless computer, connects to the router.
The router that looks up on the open dns servers to find out where it's meant to be going.
This is quite cool, because then all you need to do is change the router.
You don't need to faff around doing other things, and it can cache copies of it, so you
don't need to keep looking at the phone numbers and stuff.
So that's pretty cool.
Anyway, back to the hosts file.
It will be located in first places.
If you're on the Mac, it's private, etc. hosts apparently.
At least that's what Google told me.
On Windows, it's C kind of backslash, Windows backslash, system 32 backslash, drivers backslash,
etc. backslash hosts.
On Linux, it's simply slash, etc. slash hosts.
Need to mention the Windows file here.
They do have a file, hosts.sam, which stands for sample.
If you put anything in there, it doesn't do anything, which I found out when I first
started playing around with this.
You need to rename it to hosts, just plain hosts.
If you use notepad, gotta be careful, because it will try and put hosts.text.
The Linux file does exist and does already contain stuff, and it's quite important, because
if you overwrite the file, which I did on the friends computer, it killed Sude.
And it couldn't run, and half the stuff didn't work, because it uses the local IP address
it seems.
So gotta be very careful about that, and I ended up having to grab a live CD to fix it.
Once you've done changes, you can reboot to fix it.
Or in Linux, you should be able to do a kill all the dash, hub, iNet, D to restart it.
And those are probably the way, but it caches it.
I found generally so reboot the easiest way, just to make sure everything's flushed.
And there's an example hosts file at www.nvps.org-winhelp-2002-host.com.
I will put that in the show notes.
The basic format though, is you put the IP address and then the URL, for example, if you
want to connect to your local machine, let's say you're running a scroll mail or something
you want to connect to your own machine, you can put 127.0, 0.0.1, which is your local
machine, space, mail.
And then you type in mail in your address bar, and your browser, and it will take you
to your local machine.
Pretty cool.
I've got a setup for the DSL and the router, for example, mainly just some lazy.
And I had some issues originally, I kept changing the IP address and could never remember
them.
So I've got a setup, so I'm just type DSL or router, and it shows me where it is.
So this is the cool thing.
Using the wrong phone number, double-click.net, suck.
They have ads on about the entire internet, it seems.
There's also issues that my space, for example, served ads up from, may not have been double-click,
but it was one of these, and the server got hacked, the ad server got hacked.
Then all you need to do is load my space, suddenly your machine's hacked by this ad.
My space itself was secure, but the ad server wasn't.
And there are a bunch of 12-year-olds that got hacked on this.
Which is really bad.
So what you can do is if you don't want to see a double-click ad ever again, you add
a new life for 1-27.0.0.0.1, space, double-click.net.
So you're saying double-click.net is on my local machine.
So what then happens is you go to a website, there's a double-click ad there.
It says, oh, double-click.
I need to go there.
This in the host file, oh, it's on the local machine, looks on the local machine, can't
find it, gives you a 404 error for it.
However, the rest of the web page loads up because that's different address, and you
may end up with a small iframe saying 404 error or a blank or whatever, but you will
not get the ad.
This is really cool.
It says you're bandwidth as well, and I highly recommend it for most sites.
If you like the sites, if you like the sites, you want them to have money from the ads.
Basically, if it's a project that you like, don't do this, but if it's something big
like my space and they're being idiots, feel free to do it.
Oh, let you figure out the morality of what you feel is right for that or not.
Personally, I'll be tempted to just say block all the ads and just give donations to the
people you like, because then it saves them anyway.
But this is a really cool web blocking ads.
Now, I used to do this a lot, and I said this is MVPS website that they have a copy of
one that blocks pretty much all the sites, and all the really bad dodgy ones and spammers
and stuff.
It blocks a ton of websites that you don't want to go to, and it's really cool.
I've moved on to Privacy, though, from there, and I now is using Squid as a proxy server,
and I'm using that for a lot more because I'm getting it to control my cookies and things
as well as blocking the ads out.
But that's really cool, and I highly recommend it.
That's all I'm going to say for now.
A nice short episode, again, I try not to make these too long.
Sometimes if you end up with a four-hour show, it's just a bit, but ignoring the fact
it's a huge download, it's just way too long to listen to, so I try and keep these sort
of 10, 15 minutes long, just a little bit of information.
Just because after about 20 minutes of brain starts seizing up and you forget things and
you stop listening properly, so let's just try and keep these nice and brief.
I'd like to give a shout out to everyone in the RC chat rooms that talked to me, everyone
that's giving me feedback.
Everyone says, thank you.
This has been Soak.
If you want to talk to me, my website is Soak.org.
All the details on the Hack Public Radio website, you can go in the correspondence and find
me there.
Keep giving me the feedback.
Hopefully, this one will be stereo.
Apparently, the last one was in mono, so I apologize for that.
Thank you very much for listening, and we'll catch you later.
Thank you for listening to Hack with OverGradio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-E-T for all of us in the

173
hpr_transcripts/hpr0092.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
Episode: 92
Title: HPR0092: bugs
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0092/hpr0092.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:23:48
---
And
This is class two for Hecker Public Radio.
Bug reporting and bug triaging.
These are great ways to get involved with an open source project that you use, that you
want to contribute to, without really knowing anything about, for instance, programming
or project management or anything like that.
Now when you buy a commercial piece of software, the perception is that you are buying a certain
amount of security, that the company has paid people to do bug testing and things like
that, so that when you run the software, it runs really, really well and does not fail.
Now of course, there's not any software package out there without a bug in it, of course,
so the effectiveness of this model is highly questionable.
Now the alternative obviously is open source software, and for that to really work, I think
one of the requirements or one of the ideas is that a lot of the users are going to also
be quality assurance people, they're going to be bug reporters, so that when the program
does fail, you are able to send a report to the programmer, to the development team, telling
them how it failed, when it failed, and possibly why it might have failed, so that they can
take that and improve on it, and so that they'll have a better program and everyone using
it, including yourself, will have a better user experience.
So if you're using a software a lot and you're enjoying it and you like it and you're into
that application, one of the great things that you can do for it is other than donating
money so that the development can continue, is to submit bugs, so that if it does crash
or if there's something that needs improvement or something happens that is not expected,
filing a bug will help the programmer or programmers know where the problem is or what needs
improvement.
Now if you've never filed a bug before, you might be a little bit unclear as to how
that whole process works, so I'm going to go through that briefly and then I'm going
to talk about what happens on the other end as well.
To file a bug, you're going to typically get two choices.
One is going to be if the program crashes, a lot of times the programmer will just include
a little dialogue box, notifying you that the program has crashed and that you should
send a bug report to them and sometimes there will be a little button right there that
says send the bug report or there will be instructions on where to send the bug report.
So if it's that, if it's that casual, then basically all you're going to do is either
click the button or just open up an email and email the address that they're giving you
telling them that yes, the program quit and this is why it quit, this is how it quit, this
is when it quit.
The idea there is to give them basically a step-by-step instruction on how to replicate or recreate
that bug so that they can sit down in front of their system and do exactly what you did
leading up to that bug or leading up to that crash or whatever.
Try to give it to them just like a recipe basically so that they can just sit down, read
your instructions, do it and bang, see the same bug that you saw.
That's the ideal.
If you can't do that, then just give them as much information as possible, you know,
leading up to what was going on before this bug occurrence happened.
The other way is a slightly more formal way, I think probably a little bit more typical
through some kind of bug tracking system.
Usually this is just a web-based database.
Bugzilla is one of the big ones that you'll hear about but there are others and this is
usually found either again as some kind of pop-up window after your application goes down
or it's on the web, the project's website or something like that and you can find their
bugzilla or whatever.
You go to the site, usually you'll have to create an account there.
You'll give a username, probably maybe a password and your email.
The email is going to be very helpful because if they have questions about your bug report,
they'll be able to contact you later on to ask you more for more information, which is
actually quite good.
So you can create your user account and then you just go through some little drop-down menus
usually or maybe some selections telling them what version of the program you're running,
what platform you're running it on and again sort of a text area where you can fill in
ideally a step-by-step instruction for the programmer on how they can recreate that bug.
If you don't feel like you know what you're doing, maybe this is the first time you've
ever filed a bug in a bug tracker, just do your best.
You'll be pleasantly surprised, I think, to find how nice these people are.
They're really appreciative that you're filing a bug, you're taking time to do this.
So they're going to be very nice about it.
They don't care if you don't do it exactly as a program or would, you know.
They just want your feedback and if they need more information, they have your email
address and they will contact you.
The first time that I filed a bug with an open source project in their bug tracker, I
was really pleasantly surprised to find that they actually did email me back a couple of
times telling me different things that I could try to get around this bug and they had
me try some different things and report back to them.
So it was a lot more interactive than the previous bugs I'd filed with commercial software
packages where you just send your bug in and it kind of just disappears.
No way to track it, no way to keep track of it.
So give that a shot, it's fairly easy to do and it's very, very helpful.
They can help the programmers, it can help you, it can help everyone else using the software.
So it's a great thing to get into.
Like I say, those are usually found just on the project's website, there's usually some
kind of link to their bug tracker.
You have to understand that bug tracker served two purposes.
One is for the people filing them and the other is for the people dealing with the bugs
that have been filed.
So don't get thrown off about like different queries and things like that.
What you want to do is create a new bug.
You don't want to create a new query.
But the queries are is for the other side of the bug process and that is the people, the
bug team of that project, the people who are getting all these bug submissions and need
to sort through them and kind of categorize them and classify them and prioritize them
and things like that.
And this is another great way to get involved with a project that maybe you use on an everyday
basis and love and want to get involved with.
You can get involved with your bug team because the bug processing doesn't actually require
a whole bunch of programming knowledge or development knowledge.
You can do this as just an everyday user.
One of the most important things about doing this bug processing is just being familiar
with the project, being familiar with the program enough so that you can look at the bug
reports, kind of make sense of them and maybe even recreate them and then process them.
You use the way to get involved with a project.
This is simply, again, go to their website, look at their bug process, find out if there
is a bug team that is actively recruiting and email them or jump on IRC if they have an
IRC channel and tell them that you're interested in helping out.
Getting started in this is a little bit intimidating possibly.
If you've never done anything like it, it can be a little bit confusing but it's really
a lot easier than you realize.
Essentially, they've got a big database of all these different reports of different
kinds of bugs.
When you first join up on a bug team, they will typically assign a number of bugs to you,
maybe on a certain topic or during a certain time period.
You can take those bugs and you sort through them one by one and they will help you for
the first couple of bugs as much help as you need typically.
These people are very happy to have your help and it's part of their job as the bug team
leaders to help you become familiar with the process and to get comfortable with processing
these bugs.
You can take a bug, you'll look through it, you'll read it, usually you try to recreate
it.
You just set that bug on one side of your screen, open up the application on the other
and step through the things that the bug reporter has relayed as an issue and see if you
can get it to do the same thing.
If you do, you can usually file it typically one way and the bug team leader will tell
you they're preferred methods and if you can't recreate it, you'll file it a different
way or if you just are totally confused, you can get help from the bug team leader, things
like that.
It's a very interactive process.
It's not like you have to just sign up and then you're just kind of on your own and
you have to figure it out.
They're very helpful.
They're ready to help and you catch on really, really quickly.
Like I say, the most important thing is you're just to be familiar with the application.
So this is something that you probably want to be fairly, you just want to make sure
that you know the application well enough so that you can attempt to create the bugs.
You don't have to know everything and in fact that is actually a benefit of doing bug
triaging is that you learn a lot about the application.
You're going to be doing things sometimes that are very obscure that maybe you never
even realize that the program could do and here you are stepping through these issues
to see if you can recreate a bug and kind of learning that, oh wow, this application
does that and it does this.
That's great.
I never knew that.
It's a very neat way to learn.
A lot of times you'll learn just the most obscure things and you start to really build
up your knowledge about that application and if it's a very broad application like a
desktop environment, you might be learning a lot about Linux, like hardcore Linux stuff
that you know maybe you read about or maybe you heard about in class but kind of went
over your head at the time or you kind of forgot about or you weren't clear on.
After you try to recreate the bug like three times, you're going to be really clear on
that aspect.
So you're learning a lot.
So it's very beneficial for yourself, it's beneficial for the project and what benefits
the project, benefits the community and everyone wins.
So you can try that out and it's really cool, it's really helpful.
It's a great way to spend an evening if you don't have anything else to do, you know processing
bugs for a project that you use every day and are excited about anyway.
I mean that's a great way to help out.
So yeah, pick your project and go get involved one way or another.
Bug reporting and bug triaging, those are great ways to start out and especially bug
triaging, it's a great entry into that project.
So if you are you know learning to program or you're developing some skill and you want
to contribute to that project in some sense, you know getting your foot in the door with
just bug reporting or bug triaging rather, I mean that's kind of a cool way to get
familiar with some of the people involved in the project because you're working pretty
closely with the developers, you know, you're, you and the developers are making comments
on the same bugs.
So it's a really good way to get to know the project kind of from the inside.
Thank you for listening to Hack with OverGradio, HPR is sponsored by tarot.net so head
on over to see LRO.np for all of us here.

375
hpr_transcripts/hpr0093.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,375 @@
Episode: 93
Title: HPR0093: Newsgroups for Media
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0093/hpr0093.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:25:13
---
.
Hey, it's Steve Geek and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today's topic is news groups, which I have recently discovered has been improved for one of its main uses.
Shouts to Wi-Fi for turning me on to a recent improvement.
So, since I want to talk later in terms of background, I want to keep though what is it part of the program brief?
Essentially, news groups, which includes its most famous family of news groups, non-collectively as use net, is a traditional internet system of sharing information.
News groups form a transition point between bolt and board systems and the interweb, as well as being a transition point between text-only internet and graphical internet.
So, I want to talk more historically later on in the program, but suffice it to say here that just because news groups form a transition point in computer-based communication, that we should not deprecate it,
news groups solve many problems that are and will continue to be classic and recurring problems in computer communication.
Therefore, there is a definite advantage in using them.
Nearly every ISP has a new server, either they run their own or they subcontract it out to a big news server company.
This forms a solution to a very old problem, which is that of internet and file next.
If I want to download a large video file, let's use a concrete example.
Let's say hack TV issues a new episode and I want to download it.
Guess what? So do many other people. Thousands of other people.
Now, on the interweb way of doing things, hack TV would put the video file up on their website and thousands of people would log into the website and initiate downloads.
While modern routers are great and do a lot on their own to use multiple pathways around the internet efficiently.
Such a load could easily cause an internet traffic jam around that individual server.
In bygone days, this was possible with larger text files.
Since there are many news servers and they are constantly mirroring each other, they form a distributed way of moving public chunks of data.
So instead of going to a central site to download such a file, if you used news groups to distribute the file, you would go to your ISP's new server and download there.
Basically, there would be a faster connection because there are less connections within an ISP's user base to a distributed network of servers.
Add to this idea that news groups have this back room of the internet aspect to them.
Many people don't use them or may not know about them and therefore less users mean more speed.
Give yourself a pound of back if you notice the special feature of doing this.
That is the fact that the people who put out the hack TV episode don't pay for the bandwidth. That payment is made by your ISP.
So I can almost hear the question, why not BitTorrent?
Again, it is a matter of speed. BitTorrent relies on many people seeding a file.
The more people who leave BitTorrent clients running after the download is complete, the faster it is.
And it can get very fast indeed. But there is still a big difference between having hundreds of individual computers trying to make their uplinks to the internet for a solid cumulative download speed.
And having a dedicated server on an internet backbone having a solid download speed.
All with no overhead of managing dozens of connections.
Going back to news groups for media files, I have seen download speeds that I have never seen on BitTorrent.
Also, I don't have to open my computer up to dozens of connections from strange computers.
I can keep my firewall settings much tighter while enjoying faster download speeds.
Now that you know why I am talking about news groups, let me touch on the format of this episode.
I am going to try something a little different. I am going to make a bunch of appendixes to this episode for the information that will only be of interest to some people.
So, this classic technology of news groups.
It was invented in a day when the connections to the internet were a lot slower.
And in that era, video and audio over the internet were something they were still working towards.
Not only did they not have the compression yet, but the majority of people were all on dial-up.
People really weren't doing the media over the internet. People were using text.
News groups were designed for text. And as people interested in using news groups for media, we need to get around the limitations that the text-based design of news groups has.
The good news is this. These workarounds are now all automated.
To be brief, the problems with news groups for media people are that there is a limit of length of a post.
And that a post to news groups must be made in text. Back to the example of a new episode of a hack TV.
It would have to be converted into text. And then the text would need to be broken into as many small segments.
And each segment posted. In order to download, you need to gather all the segments up, download them, join them together, and convert them back into the hack TV episode.
My first newsreader was called Agent, and was made by a company called Forte.
And it was known for being good with binaries, which is what you call all things non-text.
It knew when something was incomplete. It would take a list of segments and make them into one line on your display.
But here's another problem with news groups for binaries. You had to download all those headers.
A line for each part of the multi-plot posting and read through the headers for searching for what you wanted.
Which was time consuming and made an avenue for you to be spammed.
Because sometimes the name of this file segment was spammed.
And to the last step of automation, the NZB file.
A NZB file is an XML file which leads each segment of a post to news groups.
You take one of these small files and you give it to an NZB compatible newsreader.
And you won't have to mess around with reading headers.
Your newsreader takes the information from the NZB file and downloads all the parts and makes them back into the original binary file.
NZBs are great enhancement because there are a number of ways of getting them.
I would love to hear from anyone in our community who is interested in sharing these.
Because I figure if your taste runs to listening to this program, then our taste probably are common enough that I would enjoy your finds on news groups.
If anybody wants to contact me about getting and giving NZBs, please do so.
Getting NZBs is easy. You can email them around.
Put them on thumb drives hand to your buddies.
Post them to forms. Even post them on news groups so you have a group with a line for each file which makes news groups that much more efficient.
But the most popular way of getting them is in the way they were designed to be used.
Off of web pages.
That's right, this technology brings the whole thing full circle and makes news groups part of the global Intel Web again.
Not only could you put them on a personal web page if you wanted to, but these were invented by a web based search engine that indexed news groups.
You use the search engine, get the NZB file for a desired file and bank instant high speed download.
So, I use the newsreader pan and it is just an app getaway for most Linux people.
I can personally recommend this newsreader as well as having the confidence to recommend Fort A's agent newsreader.
I will mention more clients later, but pan is modeled on agent, but written for the Unish world.
When I first heard of NZBs, I actually looked around for one that advertised that it could handle these.
However, in my general interest of the current news group scene, I happened to be looking at the man page for pan and lo and behold, it can already do the NZB thing.
Turns out, it is one of those programs that runs graphically, but if you type in pan, a space, and an NZB file name, it will download the files that the NZB refers to.
Pretty sweet to find that feature was already in a newsreader that I am using.
Pan also automatically consolidates multiple parts of a post and makes them into one line, which you can right click and save conveniently.
Actually, you can highlight many lines of files, whatever, you know, a few hundred images, a few dozen songs, a video, whatever, and save them with one click.
It has its own queue manager that may give you my examples in pan and, you know, I'll try to do it in general tips for other readers you might try.
How about we roll through what it's like to do the news group thing?
Step zero is, I'm sure you guessed, is to apt get your newsreader, so I apt get install pan.
Next, is to find out what my news server is.
So I use Google, and I have two ISPs now, but the big one is Verizon.
So I use this query at Google, quote, news server site Verizon.net.
This tells Google to search Verizon.net for news server.
In most cases, you can just glean the name of the news server from the Google page.
You will see in the summary something like news.verizon.net or nntp.verizon.net.
If you want, you can also call your ISPs customer service.
Hunt around the menu line and find something like edit servers and go into that and do what you have to do to add a server.
So you put news.verizon.net into the server box, type your username into the account name, and account name box, and password into the password box.
Pretty standard stuff.
Now, step two is to get the list of groups your new server carries into your program.
There is usually a menu tab called groups, which will have an entry called something like update groups list.
Click that and your client will contact the server and download several dozen thousand group names.
Okay, we are ready to have some fun.
Now, to help you get your feet wet, when I began to write this podcast, I began uploading episodes of podcasts to the news group system.
So, if you ever wanted a library of the podcasts without having to whack us for bandwidth, here is your chance to download old episodes of the fun internet radio shows.
Benrev, HPR, RFA, TWATEC.
I also figured, hey, maybe this counts as promotion.
First day, I uploaded all the episodes numbered one, and et cetera, up to this episode, you are listening to now, is being originally aired on Hacker Public Radio.
So, if you want to follow along, you find your new client search function, which is usually something where you type FU in a box, only groups with FU in the name will show.
Use NCB and find a group named alt.binaries.nzb-files.mp3s.
They will see a computer hacker freak internet talk radio thread, and a bunch of lines with day one, day two, et cetera.
If you look at the poster author line, you will see DeepGeek.
Find the mousebook you need to do to save article attachment and save daywhatever.nzb.
Close the application out and hit a command line, CV into the directory you saved into, and type in, this is from my reader.
panspacedaywhatever.nzb. After doing this, you will see pan or whatever reader you choose, begin downloading a group of MP3 files. Enjoy!
Now, that was the world-wren tour, but you have enough to get you started, at least for audio files.
If you try this, you can now fool around with it until you get it right.
Let's wrap up the within the news client thing.
There is a practice known as subscribing to a news group you need to know about.
What this means is this. Let's say we are talking about a more active group, like the one where the example files were actually posted to, which is alt.binaries.nzb.nzb.
That's spoken dashboard. Alt.binaries.nzb.nzb.nzb.nzb.
Now, if you download the headers to read them today, you don't want to download the same headers tomorrow.
These new servers keep between a few days and a month or so on their system.
If you subscribe, your news reader will keep track of the last header it downloaded.
Tomorrow, you can click on something called get new headers in subscribed groups and get only the new headers.
In the more busy groups, people will post the NCB files after posting the content.
So, I like to check out a few news groups daily and then put NCB in a search box.
Doing this, though, is an option. There are a few groups I want to mention.
Alt.binaries.irdashbook.technical. North
The inventor of this NCB stuff was newsmen.com
a new group indexing site, but you know how I am.
I found an alternative that is free.
The alternative is HTTP, colon slash slash,
alt.binaries.nl.
Kind of a weird URL, but it works.
Here, you can type in different words and see a file
which match her out there.
You can also click a button for an NCB.
Now, video is a tough one because the files are really huge.
So, you may see things on the screen where you see a file
named repeated over and over again, and each line will have a
Part01.RAR, Part02.RAR, Part03.RAR at the end.
These are files that have been compressed further,
and if you want a video encoded like this,
you need to download all the parts.
Use a command called UnRAR.
Again, it's an apt-get away.
And for this to work, you need to run the command
on the Part01.RAR file.
And UnRAR will correctly merge the other parts.
How do you get all the parts?
Well, you checkbox each of the parts on the webpage
and click Create NCB link,
which will bring up your web browser's saved dialog.
The Create NCB file will contain all the parts you checked off.
Alt.binaries.nl has another neat function.
If you click the List News Group link,
or search for news groups with a certain word in the name,
the resulting list will be sorted by default
with the amount of gigabytes or megabytes the group currently has out there.
This is good for finding groups you may want to scan daily.
Okay, I told you about news groups and binaries.
There are advantages.
How to get stored with a news reader.
How to get going on a free news group indexing site.
Looks like it's time for the gig tidbit and appendices.
Today's gig tidbit, I want to tell you how I personally
overcame my Verizon problems.
Verizon totally sucks.
Because where I am, they are the only broadband provider,
so I have to have them.
The actual connection is good,
but all this service sucks,
and their customer people.
Well, they are just dumb in the sack of hair.
Verizon Tech Support does not admit the existence of Linux,
so you have to lie to them about what you are using.
They also hire complete idiots.
I hate having to report a service not working.
Let me tell you a story.
The other day, I could not check my email at my own domain,
and I found out that Verizon's DNS service
were not resolving it,
so I called them and got this girl to whom I told this to.
She asked me, quote,
this DNS server, is this a part of Windows?
I'm not kidding.
This was the person Verizon expected to support me.
Somebody who did not even know how a domain name is converted
into an IP number.
Jesus Christ.
So I bit my tongue, said no.
That would be glad to help or simulate the problem on her end.
And she said, well, it is not in my scripts,
which I am supposed to stick to,
so I am going to have to give it to my supervisor.
I told the supervisor about the problem,
adding, I know you guys can't fix it.
I just want you guys to let maintenance control know about it,
so they can look at when they get in.
She said she could only contact maintenance control
for a line down or a line slow issue.
I said, so.
You guys are just as locked away from Verizon's staff as I am, huh?
I got a little satisfaction, though.
She then offered me enhanced technical support
for a recurring monthly fee.
Can you believe this stuff?
So I told her the truth.
I said, it's not meant about you in particular, ma'am.
But after the last dozen times I actually called Verizon
for internet support.
I left me with the impression that your organization
simply is not capable of giving support.
Now, the first time I realized what a gaping black hole
of stupidity Verizon customer support was.
I drove to my old dial-up ISP and asked them for DSL.
They couldn't.
And I must have been shaken pretty bad
because they sent me down and offered me coffee
and called me down.
This time I went back to my old dial-up provider
and I said, look, I know you guys don't have DSL in my neighborhood.
But I want to connect to you guys through my DSL.
I want to use your new server, your email server,
your DNS server, and call you for support
if something goes wrong.
Guess what?
They had a limited dial-up plan
that includes a little dial-up just in case my DSL goes down.
What I just mentioned to you and a free Unix shell account
all for a big 60 bucks a year.
Best part is, if I call them,
and they are only open during business hours,
but I can talk to somebody who knows about computers.
Amazing!
Now, I should never have to talk to a Verizon ISP division person again.
All right.
Appendix 1.
Some application names.
Here are some names of programs that you may want to check out.
Pan mentioned before, a GUI newsreader
that has command line support for NZB uses.
Pan also has great control over ahead of control files
with some reader slack.
Hela NZB is a command line Python-based binary grabber.
K, Lib, Ido, and NZB
are a few other Linux GUI grabbers I have not tried,
but mentioned in case you want to try them.
Unison is a Mac client,
but features support for NZB.
Fortay's agent is a commercial newsreader for Windows.
It lists NZB support and has pre-trial offer.
You may want to search Wikipedia.org
for, quote, comparison of news clients, unquote,
for more ideas on what to try.
Appendix 2.
Newsgroups for discussion.
If you think after listening to all this
that I am saying that newsgroups are dead for discussion,
you have misinterpreted me.
They are not dead at all,
but the system itself is very much prone to spam.
It was just designed before spam became a problem.
In regards to spam,
there are a bunch of newsgroups which are termed moderated.
They typically have some form of robot moderation these days,
but some still use people to moderate.
When you post to these groups,
it's intercepted and reviewed.
Whoever or whatever is doing the moderation then,
if they think it is okay,
repost it under your name.
The security is amazingly lax.
There is no password for this process,
and if you read RFCs,
or compare post headers between moderated and unmoderated groups,
you will see the header whose existence puts the post through.
I don't say this in the spirit of telling you how to get around something,
but instead because we have a special thing on newsgroups.
If you ever read some hacker groups,
you will see that there is spam,
as well as there being a hell of a lot of childlike behavior.
To combat both,
hackers from the day,
created alt.hackers,
a special group that is moderated,
but has no moderator.
So if you want to post there,
you need to set the headers yourself to get them through.
Every once in a while,
somebody can't figure out how to post there,
and they go with an old config and complain about this misconfigured group,
jokes on them though.
There are other groups that are not binary,
and really shine on the newsgroup system.
And they are tech support groups and special digest groups.
Tech support groups are groups that support people on certain computer platforms.
These are great news groups
because you really don't want to read a thread of posts
unless you want to get involved in it.
So you read the subjects and only look at something if it interests you.
Try the Comp.Lang Groups,
like Comp.Lang.Python.
Also, Linux.Debian.User is another really good example.
Digest groups are really special
because there are a few things that have such a wide audience
that running an email list for them becomes problematical and costly.
The hugely popular Comp.Risks is a lot like this.
A periodic digest of incidents of people rushing ahead
and trusting technology too much without analyzing the risks.
Published under the auspices of the ACM
and using an editor to summarize posts
because they are so volumous.
You can read all about mishaps with computers
like ships and airplanes going to the wrong places,
people driving off bridges that were under construction
but not marked as such in a direction's database,
stuff like that.
Using news groups for discussion is very dependent on you.
You need to find a topic header
and then look about to see if the group is active.
Some groups have died long ago,
but there are some out there.
Alright, third appendix, news group naming.
So you've just downloaded the names of dozens of thousands of news groups.
Don't think, yes.
But here are some explanatory notes.
First thing you should know is that the names of backwards
and comparisons to sites on the interweb.
On the interweb, you have a top level domain like .com
and then you have a site within that domain like IBM.com.
Then if IBM decides to have a subdomain,
you might have something like Linux.ibm.com.
On the news group system, you have hierarchies
and the two most important being alt and the big eight.
When you get subdivisions, you get alt.binaries.
When you get, then you get alt.binaries.multimedia.
What is alt?
Well, it is a huge and very freewheeling hierarchy of news groups.
Originally, it's to it for either alternative or anarchist lunatics and terrorists.
Take your pick.
In the day, somebody could create an old group
by looking up and issuing the right command
by posting a post with special headers.
As you probably guessed by now,
there are a lot more news groups than we have now.
Nowadays, you discuss it in alt.config,
wait a while, and then issue the commands.
It is up to the new server companies to allow the commands.
To go through their systems or not.
So be nice on alt.config.
There are big shots reading it.
What was alt and alternative to it?
To use net, which is the proper term for groups of hierarchies known as the big eight.
These are considered the official news groups.
And starting a news group here has tougher standards.
If you want to know more, have a look at big-8.org.
These hierarchies are comp, news, sigh, humanities, wreck, suck, talk, and missk.
They deal with computers, news groups, science, humanities,
recreation, socialization, discussion, and a miscellaneous hierarchy.
After that, there is a hierarchy for individual states like CO.whatevergroups for Colorado
and NY.whatevergroups for New York.
Countries and languages have their own hierarchies too.
Then, there are groups for institutions.
There are, for example, hierarchies for MIT.
The Massachusetts Institute for Technology.
Microsoft maintains a news group hierarchy.
There is a whole Linux dot hierarchy.
So, you should be able to find almost anything out there.
Thank you for listening to H.P.R. sponsored by Carol.net.
So, head on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-T for all of us here.
Thank you very much.

213
hpr_transcripts/hpr0094.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,213 @@
Episode: 94
Title: HPR0094: Initrd and Initramfs
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0094/hpr0094.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:25:44
---
In
Hello, welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker, public radio with your host today,
me, Dan.
Sometimes known as the man, but typically not, Washgo.
So I hosted a Linux link tech show of the very, very, very late logger and just all around
in Linux enthusiasts and I am going to be continuing my ongoing series of the Linux boot process
today with a discussion of in it or D and in it RAM FS, how they work, how you can actually
create them, what they do.
And in addition, talking a little bit about kernels, but before we do that, let's, let's
rehash what we've covered in the past already.
We did an overview of the boot process originally and talked about one of the big differences
and distributions is a system five versus BSD style of initialization scripts, Red Hat,
Debian, Susa, Mandriva, all being system five distributions that make use of an in it.
.d directory, which and a number of RC number.d run level directories, which simlink to the
scripts in the in it .d directory and are typically initial initiated by this configuration
file at boot time after in it has run so that those processes in that specified run level
are started or killed.
So to speak, that is a little bit different than how the BSD style of script of initialization
works and those are the slackware and the arch based systems in that instead of having separate
run level directories, there's just a one RC .d directory in which you will find a number
of files that get called depending on what run level you are on scripts.
So it's a little more a little less contained, a little more contained, so to speak, not
as spread out.
In some cases, some people find it a little more difficult to manage.
Anyway, we covered that in the first episode.
Then we got into talking about bootloaders, Lilo versus Grub, and some of the differences
compared to those bootloaders and we decided, I believe that Grub was the bootloader of
the gods, if I'm not mistaken, and how awesome Grub is is actually its own little operating
system and how the bootloader is initialized and by the BIOS kicked off and then has enough
information to find the kernel that you want booted and typically the root file system.
I think, oh, and then we finished last time talking about Linux boot parameters that you
could pass to the kernel to handle some stuff like identifying the root device, passing
certain parameters to drivers that may require initialization, turning off certain features
like ACPI or probing of PCI devices and all sorts of different features there.
So we discussed that in that episode.
And now this episode, we are going to talk about the initializing RAM disk and the initializing
RAM FS file system disk and why they're required and what they're needed.
But before we actually discuss those two technologies, we should probably take a look at different
kernels out there.
The discussion between monolithic versus a modular kernel versus what's called a micro
kernel and kind of a little overview of what those mean.
Now Linux, BSD, DAWOS, Windows, or all considered monolithic kernels.
That is, their kernel contains all the drivers, all of the operations and code to perform kernel
related tasks and they're compiled into the kernel and the interactions with the kernel
are done through system calls.
So when we say that Linux is a monolithic kernel, initially it was designed to be a monolithic
kernel.
It still is.
So don't be confused when you hear modular because what a modular kernel is in a Linux
sense is kind of a hybrid kernel or it is a monolithic kernel that has some modularity
built into it and we'll catch up on that in just a minute.
But anyway, the advantages of a monolithic kernel are typically less code, so therefore
it means less complexity.
In addition to having less code, it means it's generally smaller in size and also with less
code, there would be hopefully fewer bugs and security issues.
Now some people might already be saying, well wait a minute, I thought one of the reasons
of a modular kernel was that it was a smaller in size but we're going to get to that in
just a second.
So understand what we mean, talking about a monolithic kernel versus a micro kernel
at this point.
Some of the disadvantages of a monolithic kernel is because it contains everything in it.
It can be difficult to patch and test.
If you want to patch the kernel or test it, you have to actually recompile the entire
thing and reboot your system with that kernel.
Also if there's a bug somewhere in a kernel, because everything is interconnected in the
kernel and the kernel controls all the communication between the different parts and it's
not separated or spread out, it's all in kernel land.
It can, a bug in one part of the system can infect all other parts of the system or many
different parts of the system and cause bigger problems.
Now on contrast, what a micro kernel is, is basically for a micro kernel, only the
fundamental tasks and device drivers are handled by the kernel, such things as memory management,
passing messages between processes and stuff.
All other tasks are handled by the user space and the user space by what are called servers
or user mode servers.
So unlike a monolithic kernel where the user space communicates with the device drivers
and everything which is controlled, the kernel does all that communication for you through
system calls.
The micro kernel only handles the fundamental tasks of the low level stuff, memory management,
passing messages between processes through the interaction of user mode servers, making
calls to ports on the actual micro kernel.
Some of the advantages of a micro kernel are that it's easier to maintain and it's testing
is easier as you can swap patches in and out of the micro kernel so you can actually unload
parts of the kernel or swap out the actual kernel itself.
Now the disadvantage is typically a micro kernel is a little larger than a monolithic kernel,
has a larger running footprint.
It's more complex to interact with, you're making port calls from user mode servers so there's
more emphasis placed upon the user mode side of things to interact with the kernel and
control different devices and processes and process management can be a lot more complex.
So it differentiates, a monolithic kernel difference is different than a micro kernel is,
you could look at it and say more of the functionality of communication between processes and devices
is handled by a monolithic kernel as opposed to a micro kernel.
Micro kernel makes user mode servers to communicate between the micro kernel and different applications
to control different devices and perform different things that would be with the operating system
with perform.
Now on the other hand, what you have a modular kernel is taking a monolithic kernel and breaking
out some of the functionality of the kernel into dynamically loadable or unloadable modules
or drivers.
What this does is it releases some of the tasks of the kernel into dynamically loaded components.
Making it easier to manage the kernel overall, it provides for faster and easier development
for drivers since they can now operate its modules so you can load them as needed.
If you needed to update one, you can actually compile it outside of the kernel and load it into your
currently running kernel since in the same thing with services.
Now some of the disadvantages are now when you add the dynamic level of modules that can be loaded
or unloaded, you're adding an extra layer of communication so you're going to require more interfaces
to pass through and require more communication avenues within the kernel which opens up the
possibility for more bugs.
In addition to that, maintaining those modules for the kernel can be a little more difficult
because now you're not just maintaining, so to speak, the modules within the kernel space
but you also have to if you're maintaining modules outside the kernel source and proper,
you need to make sure that you keep pace with the updates made to the kernel proper.
Typically here, people say a modular kernel is a more streamlined kernel and it should have a smaller footprint.
So why were you saying at the beginning a monolithic kernel has a smaller footprint?
Well, what I mean a monolithic kernel has a smaller footprint than a micro kernel is that it's compared to a micro kernel.
Not necessarily a monolithic kernel versus a modular monolithic kernel.
Now where are the big advantages to a modular monolithic come into play are typically for embedded systems,
systems that are lower end and where resources are premium.
On today's quad core 64-bit systems with two to four gigs of RAM standard,
you're really not going to probably notice a big difference between a modular and a monolithic kernel.
Really, you're almost splitting hairs at that point.
So to be clear, loading a module dynamically into the kernel can incur some overhead
compared to having the module compiled into the kernel because you're requiring a little more resources to load that kernel in
and maintain a communication between that kernel module.
But on the other hand, this dynamically loading of the module can be offset.
The resources consume can be offset by the overall smaller footprint of a model of the monolithic kernel
because you don't necessarily have to have code that you're not going to use compiled in there.
For instance, if you're developing a device that has an onboard flash device and uses EXT3 files or EXT2 filesystem,
you don't need the XFS drivers or Rise or File system drivers compiled into the kernel.
You probably don't need ID devices compiled into the kernel.
You might not need sound devices compiled into the kernel or video for Linux devices compiled in.
So you can strip all that stuff out and in fact strip just about everything out and just only have the devices that you need loaded in as you need them.
So it provides for a smaller footprint of a kernel but I don't want to say it necessarily makes it more portable without the addition of using the initializing RAM disk or the initializing RAM file system.
Now, when you take a modular kernel and attempt to boot the modular kernel because you've essentially stripped out as much of the device drivers and resources and services as possible out of the kernel,
you have essentially a kernel that's really only going to kick itself into production to be able to maintain memory management and begin the boot process.
But typically a modular kernel is not going to be able to recognize your hardware devices won't be able to find the block device that your root partition is on or be able to access the file system because those modules aren't compiled into the kernel.
Therefore, you're going to need something like the initializing RAM disk or the initializing RAM FS. Those two technologies were created to solve the problem of loading necessary modules at boot time to initialize the system so that the root partition can be mounted and the actual true, you know, the rest of the modules and devices initialized.
Now, in an RT initializing RAM disk is generally a file system, it's actually a compressed block image, usually compressed with gzip, that's anywhere from 1.4 to 4 megabytes in size.
Now, because it's a compressed block image, because it is a block image, it's a fixed size, and again, typically a 4 megabytes in size.
So therefore, when the kernel kicks off and is past the in-it-RD image parameter, which is to path to the in-it-RD image, it actually mounts the in-it-RD image as a loopback device in RAM.
And what that does is then, it allows the kernel to load out of that RAM disk, the drivers that it needs to access the root partition to access, you know, the file system, the file system drivers in there to read the file system under like EXT3 or Ryzer or whatever your file system is.
And thus, continue the boot process. It's got its own like little pseudo root file system, a lot of them use busy box, it has its own little in-it in there, and it initializes it, and it allows the system to continue booting, at which points, after the initializing RAM disk is finished, it will then pass off, pass control back to the kernel, which can then, you know, begin mounting the original root file system and continue with the...
and continue with the in-it process there. Now, some of the limitations of in-it-RD is that, because it is a fixed size, the contents on the in-it-RD image may not encompass the entirety of the space allotted to the block image.
And thus, when it gets loaded into RAM, it's going to take up four megabytes of RAM space. Unfortunately, that four megabytes of RAM space is not retrievable until the system reboots, so you lose four megs of space right there to be able to kick off the modular kernel.
The amount of memory, again, cannot be freed until it's rebooted, unfortunately. In addition to that, because it is a file system, you have to load in the necessary module to read the file system contained on that image.
So, if it's an EXT to file system, and you're using riser file system, you are going to incur the overhead cost of loading the EXT to module into your kernel to read the in-it-RD file system so that it can kick off the necessary loading of the riser file system to load your root partition and all the other partitions associated with your running system, even though you don't require EXT to, it's going to be loaded.
And finally, as it is a block device, the in-it-RD image requires system administrator privileges to create as the initial creation of the device must be mounted as a loopback device.
So, only system administrators can create these loopback devices. Now, to relieve some of the limitations of the initializing RAM disk, initializing RAM FS was developed, and unlike the in-it-RD, which the kernel loads is a block device in the memory, the in-it-RAM file system is loaded as a file into memory.
And instead of a compressed block image, it makes use of a compressed CPIO image. And again, since there's no mounting of loopback device, when you create the in-it-RAM FS, you do not require administrator privileges to do that.
Again, since it's not a loopback device but a file, one of the benefits of in-it-RAM FS is the file can grow dynamically or shrink dynamically to meet the needs of the data stored.
So, if you are only going to require a Meg or so of space for your booting of the kernel, it's only going to take up a Meg of space when you load it into the RAM to be able to kick off the rest of the process, unlike the in-it-RD, which is going to require typically four Megabytes as it is a block image.
Because it's not a file system, you don't incur the overhead of loading the file system module into to read the in-it-RD image.
Now, on the other hand, in-it-RAM FS typically uses one of three files or storage types, which is tempFS, SHMFS or RAMFS. Now, RAMFS is the older name of this. It's an older shared memory file system, and it uses RAM space as the file system, but it does not have size limitations on it, and it cannot write out the swap.
So, like in-it-RD, once it's in the RAM, it's going to take up that space, but it doesn't have any limiters on it. So, theoretically, you can create an in-it-RAM FS image to create a loop to consume all your RAM and cause a crash of your system.
Now, there's some newer file system types like tempFX. Now, what tempFS is is a temporary file system. Again, it does not use disk space, but it uses memory and swap, and that grows the shrink to fit the file system in question.
Now, what the advantages of tempFS is it has size limitations on it, and it can later be swapped out to your swap partition to free up the memory in your RAM.
Same thing with shared memory file system, it's just like tempFS, as the contents are stored in RAM, and can later be swapped out to your swap partition, or it will parse out to your swap partition.
One of the other benefits of the RAM in-it-RAM FS is it's starting to allow for the root device to be defined by the in-it-RAM FS, so that it can be on any storage media or encrypted.
This is going to provide incredible flexibility, and situations where your boot loader is incapable of loading the root file system as it normally would, or your kernel.
You know, be able to pass the information properly to your kernel.
As it stands right now, this is more for advanced uses coming down the pike than in your typical situation state, but it's being designed in a RAM FS, was designed with the future in mind, so that there's going to be far more flexibility involved to be able to mount stuff around.
It's just like encrypted file systems, and do other cool stuff with mounting linux, or kicking off linux.
Now, a most linux distribution is there are utilities to create the in-it-RDRD in-it-RAM FS image, appropriately called MK in-it-RDRMK in-it-RAM FS.
There are other ways to create these devices, and I'll leave that up to you to read the notes, because it gets pretty in-depth there, and it would make for boring radio.
Even more boring in this episode might actually already be, but anyway, you could explore those options, but typically, if you're using a modern linux distribution, it will have the tools to create the in-it-RDRD in-it-RAM FS.
Now, I'll briefly cover them both briefly. You can read the man pages, but typically, you know, Ubuntu, and I think Debian has now switched over to a RAM FS, I think Red Hat and Fedora have all switched over.
So, MK in-it-RDRD is being phased out, but essentially, you call MK in-it-RDRD, you provide the image name that you want it to be named, and then your version of your kernel, and then you can find the version of your kernel by typing you name, you, the letter U, followed by name, all one word, you name, dash A.
So, you type in your kernel version, hit enter, and it would theoretically create the in-it-RDRD image.
This creates an in-it-RD image, which contains the modules to load ID, SCSI, RAID, block devices along with the necessary file systems, modules, and SCSI host adapter entries that are defined in Etsymodules.com.
There are some other options that you can pass to include or emit other module types, and look in the man page for this.
But, again, as I say, most distributions have moved on to in-it-RAMFS, so, you know, that's probably where you want to focus right here, your efforts.
Similar to MK in-it-RDRD, MK in-it-RAMFS takes the parameter dash O, and you provide it a file name, that's for the output file name.
And it's in the remember, it's not a block file system, so this doesn't actually require system administrator rights to create the initializing RAM file system.
And then your kernel version, again, and then you can, well, it will actually create that information based upon the configuration that is typically found in Etsy slash in-it-RAMFS dash tools.
Now, you can create your own configuration directory in your home directory and specify only the options you want to use, and then you would call making it RAMFS with the dash C switch and the path to your configuration directory, which would use that instead of the one found in Etsy.
Now, be aware that in that configuration directory, there's a handful of files and directories in there, sub-directories, that are pretty important.
First off, is the in-it-RAMFS.conf file, and this specifies the default configuration on how the in-it-RAMFS image should be built and what it should contain, what devices it might need to initialize.
There's a modules file in there, and it's set up similar to the Etsy modules.conf file, where it contains a list of modules that should be included in the image, one module per line people.
So, if you need to include additional modules in there, just specify them in the modules file.
Conf.d directory contains hard-coded boot arguments, where you could set your root device in here, or the device to resume as the root device.
Now, look at some of these files, read the man pages for this, because the next two are directories. Actually, there's a hook directory and a scripts directory.
Now, the hook directory is a directory of optional scripts to be used to create the image, but that will not actually be included in the image itself.
Now, these scripts, most of these can be found in slash user slash share slash in-it-RAMFS-tools slash hooks.
You'll find a list of scripts in there, or you can put additional optional scripts in the Etsy directory, or in your Conf directory, so to speak.
The scripts directory are also known as boot scripts, and that contains scripts that are included in the initializing RAMFS image, and that will be executed during the kernel boot before the root partition has been mounted.
You will also find in the user share in a RAMFS-tools slash in-it directory, it will contain other stuff like the init script that will be run, and busybox configuration files I think might be in there, or files.
Everything you need to create that in a RAMFS image is in there.
If you ever want to add or remove files from your image RAMFS file system, you have to use the CPIO command to be able to copy in and out options in there.
If you want to add or remove files from your init RD image, on the other hand, you have to mount it as a loopback device and perform your operations that way.
And again, you are limited to the actual file space you initially defined for the init RD device.
And again, that's typically between 1.4 and 4 megabytes, most of the time you are going to find a 4 megabyte file, so to speak.
So just be aware of that.
I hope that this has provided you with enough information to get an overall idea of the differences between a monolithic slash monolithic modular kernel and a micro kernel.
I don't think I specified this, but some of the operating systems using a micro kernel are of course the new herd OS 10 uses the mock micro kernel.
And QNX, I believe, uses a micro kernel, but hopefully that provided you a little overview of the differences between those.
It wasn't meant to be all-encompassing, so if you want to find out more information, you can look up very good write-ups on those on Wikipedia.
Also, what the purpose of the init RD and init RAM FS are with regards to the kernel.
You can find more information about those on Wikipedia too and in a lot of distro documentation.
And in most books on the Linux boot process, also you can look at, I'll post my show notes and in addition to that, the links that I use for those shows in the posting for this show.
Otherwise, I have a great one, keep on listening to Hacker Public Radio, contribute, there's more and more people coming on board every day, a lot of fantastic topics, but don't cover the Linux boot process because that's mine, baby, mine.
You hear that, Zoke? That is mine. Keep your fingers off of it.
But keep on checking back if you have any questions, concerns, or if you think I was wrong about something, email me at danatthelinicslink.net or post them to the comments for the show.
I'll try and check back as much as I can.
And that's all I have for today, so have a happy. Bye-bye!
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by carro.net, so head on over to caro.net for all your hosting needs.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.

349
hpr_transcripts/hpr0095.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,349 @@
Episode: 95
Title: HPR0095: Security Wow!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0095/hpr0095.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:26:54
---
These are the ones we have here…
We would like to point out that the follow-on podcast is work of fiction.
Similarity to any real person, situation, company or product, is entirely coincidental.
Netcasts you love.
From people you trust.
This is Trade.
This is Security Now with Steve Gibson.
Episode 217 for December 9, 2008.
The title of this episode, we love our sponsors.
Security Now is brought to you by Donations from listeners like you. Thanks.
Your Donations do help us keep our advertising to a minimum.
It's time for Security Now. I'm Leo Laporte, the tech guy.
And I'm joined today by Steve Gibson.
Hi Leo, great to be with you again. Isn't this cool?
You all know Steve, we couldn't do the show without him. He's great.
Steve coined the term spyware in 1942 when he invented a wee application called Spinrite to crack the enigma machine used by those Nazis in World War II.
Spinrite is still used today.
Thanks Leo.
Steve's a security guru. He wrote the world's finest spyware before he was out of knappers.
He put his route in Sony's route kit. He found the back door into windows, the meta file.
He's the man behind DeaconBobUBobUBobUulator, shoot the messenger, shoot the president, and windshields up the pokemobile.
Steve, you're one busy man, he did all that coding in machine code, too. Isn't that right Steve?
One. I mean, two, correct, affirmative.
OK, so a big warm welcome for the man from Irvine, the last man on the planet running Windows 95 from his fortress of security,
Mr. Logical, Mr. Steve Gibson.
Uh, thanks Leo, that's a nice introduction.
But as you've mentioned my OS of choice, I have some news for you there.
I think I may be taking the plunge into Windows 98.
No.
Well, maybe.
I guess the nasty hackers out there, and perhaps even our listeners,
along since it's given up on Windows 95.
So, if I'm going to stay relevant, perhaps, so should I.
I guess it's like time to move on, to upgrade, as it were, although I don't like that term.
Well, good for you, Steve.
You may want to consider millennium addition though, that's much more secure.
Well, you know, me Leo, what step at a time?
So, Steve, did you notice our new intro music?
Uh, yes, it was vaguely familiar.
It's from our exciting new sponsor.
These guys are great, so professional and they love you, Steve.
I'm going to test you.
Let me play it again to see if you can catch who I'm talking about.
So, Steve, any ideas?
I definitely recognize that music from an advert, I think.
I forget where from.
Is it the Starbucks ad?
No, and you promised not to mention Starbucks again, you little type.
They've never given me a dime for all the bandwidth you've wasted on them.
No, our new sponsor is those great folks at Pearl and Dean.
They're great, and apparently fans of the show, as I say.
I think they fit right in with our motives here, Steve.
We've signed a two-year deal with them, so they're in for the long haul.
Such good folks.
Um, okay.
So, security now, episode 217.
I'm so excited about reaching that landmark, Leo.
Steve's joining us today on Skype.
We love those guys at Skype, they're so smart.
Wait a minute.
What's that collect?
Oh, or apparently we don't have a deal with Skype.
So, turns out we're looking for a better VoIP provider.
Skype's blow way, I just don't like their attitude.
Still, I guess we'll try and make the best of what we have here.
God, that's so annoying.
Skype really are taking the piss there.
So, how are you, Steve?
Here we are, episode 217.
Why is that a landmark?
Well, it's because.
I know.
It's because you've overtaken my twat podcast.
We don't record that when I'm on vacation, so I think we're up to episode 150 of that.
Well, yes, okay.
Actually, no, I'm happy because 217 is such a special number.
Oh, how so?
Well, my grandfather lived to 103.
Wow.
And 103 expressed as binary bits is 1-1-0-0-1-1.
Now, if you take those bits as a string and put them through an MD5 hash, you get F7B9-DB683-A2-B-D-9-A7-A-D-9-6-0-A-D-E-E-O-7-DBF-D-9.
Well, I know that.
Yeah, that's hex, of course.
Of course.
And, and you will note.
And so will our listeners.
But the last two characters in that hash would be a nine.
Yes.
Well, D9.
Assuming little Indian notation is 217 indesimal.
Of course, so cool.
So, there you go.
Episode D9.
Grand Annie.
This one's for you.
Nice.
You see, that's why this show is so popular.
You use to take a complicated subject like cryptographic hashing and show its relevance in such a clear and simple way.
Let me mention our best and original sponsor.
Nerds on-site.
Such great guys.
So smart.
What's that collect?
Oh.
Apparently, we haven't heard from those guys for over a year.
I guess that means they're just cowboys.
It's clear of nerds on-site.
I hope you rod in hell, guys.
But I must mention those great folks at Astaro.
Have I mentioned these guys before?
They are so smart.
Now, how can I describe their product?
Astaro made boxes.
Not cardboard boxes.
But metal boxes.
Best of breed, open metal boxes.
I've got two.
We love these guys.
Check them out at www.astaro.com.
Great folks.
Yeah.
They're nice guys.
I've read them, you know.
Oh.
Have you seen one of these Astaro boxes, too, Steve?
Yep.
Very cool.
Aren't they just?
I've got two sitting right in front of me on my desk.
And I feel so much better that I do.
You're an expert, Steve.
Should I plug these in?
Well, I guess you probably should.
Why haven't we done an episode about Astaro, Steve?
Well, that's a good question.
Okay, so on with the show.
Have you got any Arata or feedback from last week's podcast, Steve?
Well, of course not, Leo.
It hasn't gone out yet.
This is the fourth episode of four.
We are recording in a block to fit in with your traveling commitments.
And I bet there will be a whole other stuff back up in the pipe somewhere.
Apparently, Microsoft has sneaked out a whole new operating system or two in the last seven years.
There are bound to be problems.
Cool.
Speaking of traveling, have I mentioned those great folks at Expedia?
They've done me a deal.
This is business.
It's work.
I'm taking the entire TWAT production team off on a geeky inside business class cruise to the Alta Mongolia.
We're going to eat twigs with the Bedouin people for three weeks or so.
We're taking those good folks in the Bedouin.
Some ASUS mini PCs, so they can download my podcast while they crap in the woods.
Those guys at ASUS did a good deal.
Visitors on the web at www.twatt.com
forward slash redirect underscore to underscore ASUS underscore for a nominal fee dot HTML.
Did you say you're flying business class Leo?
Oh boy!
Yeah, apparently first class is too expensive for Expedia, the penny-pinching bastards.
So I'm going to have to slum it with the riffraff.
Although I think we're flying American airways.
They're great folks.
My favorite airline.
Perhaps if you're listening AA.
Okay Leo.
So, no erratic again, but I do have an interesting and different spin-write story for you though.
Uh huh.
You know, I always look for a different slant on my product.
Okay.
I guess without spin-write, you wouldn't be able to drink at that coffee house we're not going to mention.
Starbucks!
Tell me about it.
I have to sell four copies of spin-write to get a quatt short latte and a celebrate swell.
But I guess that's a price you pay for ethically sourced coffee beans these days.
Hey, Steve, Starbucks are not ethical.
You mentioned them every episode and we've never had a dime from them.
Come to think of it, I find that odd because they're from Seattle.
I love Seattle.
Such great folks there.
Except those Starbucks bastards.
Erm, anyways.
I have had an email from a Michael Hunt of Adelaide Australia.
I've been to Australia.
Are you sure that's a real email, Steve?
Something about that name makes me think it may just be a spoof.
Michael Hunt?
No, no.
I think it's genuine.
Really?
Has he signed his email?
I signed all my emails.
Have I ever mentioned that?
Well, no he has.
And yes you have.
Frequently.
Wait till you hear when he's written.
It's going to kill you, Leo.
Okay, Pipsqueak, I'll play along but don't say I didn't warn you about that name.
So, here we go.
You've had an email from Mike.
Yes, Mike Hunt.
That's a good name.
Why would you think it's a spoof for email?
Oh, no reason.
I know.
You've met him on one of your trips to Australia.
Oh, yes, Steve, that's it.
You know, I may have done.
I've met so many great folks over there and one of them was called Mike, I think.
Oh, actually, Leo, I was being sarcastic.
Leo, Australia is so huge and you've only been there 37 times.
So the chances you saw right-cut over there are so infinitesimal as to be laughable.
Well, against the odds, but...
No!
Against the odds is an understatement.
You humans really can't tell the difference between low probability and zero probability.
Oh, Steve, you're not going to mention that twin-tailed scenario are you again?
You upset our main sponsor last time you did that.
We nearly lost all debubble.
I've had to start reading books the hard way.
I upset all debubble?
Good!
And for the last time, listening to all your books is not the same as reading books.
Anyway, back to my cut.
Mike says, hi, Steve, and Leo.
I am a long time listener to security now, and so I was all too aware of spin-write.
But hope I never need to run it as I back things up regularly.
Smart guy.
Yeah, so anyway, he continues.
And wait for this little, you're going to love this.
Oh, I always love these spin-write stories.
I know you've managed to keep coming up with different slants on the same story.
He's incredible.
I know.
Aren't they the best?
Anyway, Mike writes, I have a laptop.
Oh, dear.
I don't like where this is going.
Running Vista.
Oh, crap.
You see, that's where I use a Mac.
It gets worse.
I have a laptop running Vista, and I have used it as my main machine for a year.
Oh, boy.
I have got hundreds of emails, podcasts, photos, and even some videos on it.
Heck, he's pounding that thing.
I know.
He goes on.
Last month, we were rated by kangaroos.
Oh, there are real problem in ours.
And this kangaroo stole my laptop.
And the last thing I saw of it, it was hopping off into the bush, laptop in its pouch.
So I took my shotgun and popped one off.
The shot hit the kangaroo full in its pouch.
Hitting my machine, full on.
Ouch.
That's going to hurt.
Well, no.
It turns out that because of the laptop, the kangaroo was relatively unscathed.
Wow, that's one lucky kangaroo.
Do laptops make good body armor, Steve?
Well, I guess they do.
Because the route discarded it and disappeared oblivious to Mac's murder attempt.
I bet it was a Mac.
They're so well made.
I just say, but he's running, Vista.
Well, you can do that on a Mac.
I guess so.
But we should have Mac as a sponsor, especially if they protect you from bullets.
Collette, can you get jobs on the line, please?
Anyway.
Back to this laptop, a gram by a kangaroo, shot at and dropped.
It turns out the kangaroo had kept this Leo.
This is the part that differs from previous spint-right stories.
The kangaroo dropped the laptop into a pile of ding-o-dong.
Yeah, you're right.
Way back in episode 27, we had a kangaroo shotgun type spint-right story.
But I guess the ding-o-dong rules out a spint-right recovery.
Well, let's see.
Mike goes on.
I used my power washer to get the crap off my laptop.
Then I removed the drive, which thankfully only had two pieces of ledge shot through the spindle.
Only two, boy, that was lucky.
Three, and I guess the drive was toast.
But hang on.
You wouldn't recommend a power washer to clean a computer, would you, Steve?
No.
But it worked here.
There's such good folks at power washer.
Collette.
Collette.
Can you get power washer on the line?
Well, hang on.
Mike continues.
I removed the drive, which thankfully had only two pieces of ledge shot through the spindle.
And I thought to myself.
Spint-right.
Of course, this is one smart guy.
I used.
I used the drive as a slave on my wife's desktop machine.
Rects ran spint-right, and four days later all my data were saved.
Wow.
Mike concludes.
I know you get letters like this all the time, but I was so impressed that I just had to
write.
Thank you, spint-right.
Thank you, Steve.
So, in summary, spin-right works with drives covered in shit and peppered with bullet holes.
I'm impressed.
Oh, Leo.
It's just unique.
It makes my day.
I think letters like that.
Well, I bet it does.
Okay, Steve.
On with the show.
What are we talking about today, Steve?
Well, the listed front of me says, spin-right.
Starrow.
Body bubble.
And Australia.
So, I guess we're done.
Yes, indeedy.
Another fantastic episode.
I guess that's a wrap.
Any chance I could get you to record 2-1-8 as we've finished a couple of minutes ahead of schedule?
I fancy a week in Europe.
Maybe Virgin Atlantic.
So, that's a wrap until next week.
Another episode of Security Cash Cow.
Firmly in the bag.
Thank you, Steve.
Oh, thank you, Leo.
What, I'm gonna start this with a new piece of vinyl.
It's my new piece.
It's my new piece.
It's my new piece.
It's a carry now.
Thank you for listening to After Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.NET.
She'll head on over to CARO.ainfee for all of her teams.
Thank you very much.

159
hpr_transcripts/hpr0096.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@
Episode: 96
Title: HPR0096: Xfce, Oh I how I love you
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0096/hpr0096.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:26:36
---
Do you have money?
Yes!
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is Drupes and today I'm going to be telling you how much I love XFCE.
This is a presentation I've given for my local Louisiana Tech Linux users group and our
local Munro Linux users group.
And you can download the presentation if you would like to follow along on the slides
at tinyurl.com slash three Juliet three five Quebec golf.
And so I'm going to pretend that you've done that and let's open up the slides.
First we start with a toothpaste for dinner comic that's ha ha funny and I enjoy having
a little comic while everything's getting set up.
So while I marvel at this humorous comic, you could be downloading those slides right
now.
Now like a childhood memory that I have is a Star Wars book that when you had to turn
the page, it on the little they had a little audio tape with it and it would play a R2D2 sound.
So when you hear this sound, change the slide.
If you hear this sound, then Greedo just got shot.
Okay.
Oh, how I love you XFCE.
Let me count the ways.
First off XFCE is simple.
It's small and fast.
And it's easy.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
This is a screenshot of my laptop desktop.
It makes sense.
My laptop's desktop running XFCE, doing cool stuff.
We're going to get more into that later.
Now the philosophy of XFCE, it's a lightweight desktop environment designed for productivity.
It executes fast and it can serve system resources.
And it's modular.
It's reusable.
It's got full functionality of the desktop environment with all these little packages that
they put together.
You can pick and choose and make what's best for you.
I don't use all of XFCE's tools because I may think something else is better than what
comes with XFCE.
But as Linux users, we all know we can customize things to our own liking.
Okay, a quick history.
Started in 97.
It was a free Linux clone of CDE.
I'm sure you can read this page.
And it uses GTK2, so it's kind of dependent on Nome.
So it was NomeGrow, so does XFCE.
A example, this is what CDE on Solaris looked like.
Back when XFCE was started.
And if you look on the lower left, on the little panel down there at the bottom, or the
lower right, you can see the little arrows pointing up.
Like Apple just came out with that feature recently.
I forget what it's called, but anyway, it's something old.
This is what CDE looked like at the time, wow.
That was awesome.
And just for good measure, Nome, remember when you could slide the bottom panel over,
you're like, I don't want to see the panel anymore, and it would whoosh to the left or
whoosh to the right.
Awesome.
Like any good desktop environment, it's, you know, got window managers, panels, and
desktop managers, and you can handle your printing and things like that.
This is the settings manager.
All your settings for XFCE are one convenient little spot, boom, right there.
Everything is arranged very simple, but you can get more into more in depth with each
little tool.
And they get better and better as times go by.
Here's window manager with a different theme and stuff you can change.
Okay, here's the panel manager.
We've got it down there.
You can put the panel wherever you want.
I actually have two panels, one running at the top, one running at the bottom.
The fancy one down there on the bottom holds all my applications that I'm planning on
using, or I use frequently.
It shows, you know, the CPU and the memory and things like that, how much battery life
I have in the time.
This is mousepad.
I don't particularly use it.
I use GVib, but it's pretty much notepad.
No syntax highlighting, no fancy stuff, and that's actually notepad running in wine.
So I didn't stoop to the dark side to get that screenshot too badly.
This is the XFCE4 terminal.
It's very full featured.
It's got tabs and you can switch between them with your keyboard and make things go
quickly.
I'm an HRM user, but when I really need nice cut and paste, I can use the XFCE terminal.
Here's the settings for it, again, really, really simple, really, really easy.
It's very in depth.
This is Thuner.
It's obviously a file manager.
It's a really, really fast.
It's also really simple.
You can't burn CDs from it, and you know, it doesn't play the videos as thumbnails,
but really, do you need that stuff?
I like things fast.
This is a fancy feature of Thuner, Thuner, Thuner, however you pronounce it, that I enjoy.
If I'm going to be going to a directory a lot, and I want to make a little shortcut
to it, I just drag that directory over there to the left.
And then it's there until I get rid of it.
So when I'm working, I can make things a lot easier for myself.
This is XFBern.
Obviously it's BernCDs.
I use, oh, what's it called, it's Bersero instead of this.
I don't know why I haven't used XFBern in a really long time, and I need to go back to
this.
Pretty nice.
This is an orage, a rage.
I don't know how to pronounce things.
There should be some sort of website like sayoss.org or something to help us pronounce things,
but it's your clock calendar, reminder, date keep tracking, kind of tool, Restredo.
It's an image viewer, really quick and dirty.
It shows images on the right, and then it, you know, the thumbnails, and then it shows
the image very fast.
Now again, this is my desktop.
There's no icons, there's no right click, there's no clutter.
If you want icons on the desktop, you could have them.
If you want the right click to do stuff, you can make it do that.
Awesome.
Okay, this is my top panel.
I've got a radio listener that I wrote.
It's pretty slick, so I've been to listen to NPR, to show desktop button, weather update,
volume control, task lists, shows the tasks in that particular desktop, the pages so I
can switch between desktops, system tray, my network, or pigeon, or whatever else, XFC,
or XChat, and then of course my logout button.
This is the weather update.
Pretty easy, pretty quick, you just click on it, and you have two tabs, summary or forecast.
You have a right click on the icon to set your zip code.
This is my radio listener.
Really simple.
Open up the web page to see what's going to be coming on, play, stop, and close.
I actually wrote this in GTK dialog, so that whole little thing is just a bash script with
some XML, actually, mostly XML.
This is my bottom panel, the XFC menu icon at the start button in Windows, or the K button
in KDE, launchers for my applications, we went over that kind of stuff.
To get to the orage calendar stuff, you just click on the clock.
So now, like I said, it's based on GTK, so the larger gnome grows, the bigger XFCE will
be.
There's only a handful of developers, which means it's not really good for a corporate
environment, where you don't want to train everybody, and then these guys all the
side, they're going to do something else, maybe, but it's really good in the fact that
you can get in touch with these people and convince them to add in features.
It's a very helpful and active community, easy to customize, and it's fast, fast, fast.
Another excellent comic, if you have not downloaded the slides, you probably should.
And of course, here's the, I didn't take this screenshot, but it's got all the transparency
is in everything, so it's not just plain j like mine looks, you can make it kind of cool,
and you can do the cube, if you really have to, and you can rotate your windows and change
them all up, so it's harder to read, you know, because that makes you more productive.
Okay, contact links, xfc.org, you can go to freedesktop.org slash wiki read all about
it, Wikipedia article, I have a link, users group, and there's xfc-look.org to change
things around.
My name is Drupes, you can contact me on the hpr site or Drupes at G-Bail, and that's
some stuff about xfce, and I love it.
Thank you for listening to HACRIP of a Gradio, HPR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net, so head on
to C-A-R-O dot-E-T for all of us in the world.
Thank you very much for listening to H-A-R-O dot-E-T.

335
hpr_transcripts/hpr0097.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,335 @@
Episode: 97
Title: HPR0097: An Interview with Tony Wright
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0097/hpr0097.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:29:04
---
MUSIC
Good evening, I'm Trek Nubis, and I had the opportunity to interview the founder of my
new favorite productivity tool, Rescue Time, so I'll go ahead and let the interview speak
for itself.
I'm Tony Wright, I'm the founder of RescueTime.com, which is, well, you're probably going
to ask me what Rescue Time does in the next question, but Rescue Time is a software that
gives individuals and businesses a kind of unique and fresh understanding of how they
spend their time and provides tools to help them spend it more productively.
So who's this product aimed at, is it mostly businesses or individuals or what's going
on?
Well, so we started with the idea that we wanted to target kind of individuals, and it
was attacking kind of a personal problem of our own that, you know, that we had, we
were doing the Scrum methodology when we were doing some software development at a company
called Jobster, and every day people's job was to sort of articulate what they did in
the previous 24 hours and what they were going to get done in the next 24, and we found
that people's ability to sort of talk about what they did in the last 24 hours was awful.
They'd say, well, I thought I was going to get done, you know, these three things, but,
you know, it turns out that I only got this thing done, but I felt really busy, and I
don't know why.
So the idea, and I kind of had this suspicion that I was, you know, while I thought I
was a web developer for a living, in fact, I was increasingly turning into an emailer
and instant messenger for a living, and that that's where most of my time was.
So we wanted to kind of build this, and the idea was, you know, initially it was just
kind of for us, and as a side project, but as we talked to it to friends and other developers
more and more, we realized that there were some other people who had some interest.
So it kind of very slowly sort of morphed its way into that.
So we're, to start with, we're targeting individuals, I think as we, you know, as the
product matures a little bit and gets, gets more stable and gets more powerful, I think
there is a lot of potential with kind of small teams kind of to attack this in a collaborative
way to understand how they are collectively spending their time, because I mean, obviously
everyone's pretty buried in with the information overload issues, and we think that it would
be better if people spent less time at their, in front of their computers and, and spend
it kind of more efficiently so that they could, you know, have a life outside of their
computers.
Okay, so you're targeting individuals, you know, how can you help me give me like a
use case scenario?
Well, I mean, so that there's a couple of different use cases that the, you know, the big
one right now, because rescue time effectively is, is capturing what you're paying attention
to on the computer, it's ideally suited for people who spend most of their professional
life in front of their computer, right?
It's less good for people, you know, like a sales guy who's on the road or something like
that. So, so the idea is that, that you, you know, and what we see a lot of is people
are curious about how they spend their time. They realize that something is wrong, they
realize they're not productive as productive as they want to be, and their job is to create
some sort of output, right? Whether they're a, a coder or a designer or a writer, you
know, they have a vested interest in their own efficiency. So, and if you look at, you
know, at any sort of time management system, you know, when you, when you read these kind
of business-y self-help books, they say, well, the first thing you should do is keep a log
of how you spend your time. And it turns out that's pretty darn impractical. I mean, if you,
you imagine writing all this stuff down on a piece of paper, every time you alt tab to an
instant message window, you'd have a pretty busy piece of paper pretty quickly.
I actually tried doing that once, but I found that I jumped around too much and it was like
too much to write down. It wasn't like working out that well.
Yeah. I mean, what we're finding is people are alt tabbing. I mean, this is my favorite
stat that I pull out at rescue time, is that the average rescue time user is alt tabbing to an
instant message window, 77 times per day. And that's the average, right? So, and I, when I looked
at my own, I was about 133. And that caused me to be so horrified that I literally uninstalled
instant message apps for my computer, just because, I mean, I mean, the idea that we can multitask
human beings, I mean, if you poke around about it and research a little bit, it's just not true.
We aren't good at it. And those that cut tasks, switching and context switching is both painful
and expensive from a productivity point of view. So, the idea is that as an individual,
you know, and we see this a lot of with kind of freelance consultants too, who's financial
well-being depends on their own efficiency. That their goal is to sort of start to measure and
start to repair their kind of own productivity and get more productive. And there's certainly a,
you know, just a pure curiosity motivation as well as just, you know, people want to know the
answer to this question. And the answer is generally pretty darn entertaining if nothing else.
Okay. So, how does this work? Why don't you go ahead and just kind of like explain the process?
Sure. So, rescue time is a small downloadable application, a couple hundred K, and it's available
for Mac and Windows. And we've actually had someone in the Linux community dive in and make a Linux
client as well. But it's a small downloadable application that you will install on your computer.
And what it does is it pays attention to what you're focusing on. So, it's not measuring what
applications or websites are open, but it's measuring what's in focus. It's going to give you more
detail than say Firefox. It's not going to say, well, you spent four hours in Firefox.
It's going to actually dive into that and say you spent, you know, 20 minutes at Google and
30 minutes on Gmail and, you know, an hour and a half on Facebook or wherever you spend your time.
So, the idea is really to capture what your attention, you know, where your attention is going.
And it also, of course, idles out. So, if your computer, if your keyboard and mouse are idle for a
certain amount of time, it'll decide that you are no longer in front of your computer and kind of
close out the current record. Some of this is a little scary, though. It's kind of interesting to
see how much time I actually spend on just Google alone. Yeah. There's a blog post that we actually
have on our company blog where I actually, within rescue time, so all of this data gets sent to
our servers where we kind of, you know, crunch the numbers, then allow you to do analytics on it
to see basically a bunch of bar graphs and a bunch of lists. And you can categorize anything,
you know, website or application, any way you want via tags, kind of like delicious. So, if,
you know, for example, I have decided to tag just because I wanted to know how much Google owned
me. I decided to tag every Google product that I used, you know, whether it's Google desktop
search or Google search or Gmail or Google Analytics. I tagged all those things as Google so that I can
very easily have a day-by-day week-by-week or month-by-month sense of what percentage of my time was
spent on some sort of Google product. And when I first did that, it started as 13% on average. And
since it grown, about 19% as our company started using Google Docs and Google spreadsheets instead of
Microsoft Word and Excel. So, Google is a pretty dominant, but we did find that the still the most
dominant application on the planet is Outlook in terms of time spent.
Thoughtful question, this is such a fantastic service. How much does it actually cost?
Yeah, my home run answer is, yeah, it's right now it's free. So, we're individually
used, it's free. The idea is eventually as we kind of roll out some, and that'll be, you know,
if we ever say, and I can obviously never say what's going to, what things are going to be the
like in years, but we want there to always be a free offering. And we want it to be at least as
good as what we have now. So, we are going to make, turn this into crippleware and make it so no one
can use it unless they're forking up money. Where we kind of see it going is, you know, charging
teams and businesses to kind of see this data in aggregate and to use it kind of collectively
and collaboratively. And that's where we see, you know, eventually there being kind of a revenue
model. I'm not a big fan of advertisement, just because I don't know, it seems to me that when
you put advertisements in a tool, which rescue time is, you know, first and foremost, a tool for
people that those ads blend and tend to go away kind of visually pretty quickly, you know, if you
aren't, I don't know if you use Gmail or any webmail client, but when I use any webmail client,
you know, the ad region disappears for me, right? And you just spend so much time on it that it goes
away. So, and that we could obviously, because of the data that we have, give people some pretty
amazingly targeted ads, right? We can know, you know, exactly what you're doing. So if you're,
you know, Photoshop guy, we can give you great ads for cool Photoshop stuff, but I just don't
want to be in the ad business. I, you know, we're sort of more interested in solving people's problems
and, and, you know, being helpful for people rather than, you know, trying to trick them into
clicking on things, which is what the ad business kind of seems to be. You do have a lot of data,
a lot of really cool data. Like, I imagine that you could approach Adobe and say, Hey, you know,
we know everything about how people actually use your CS3, you know, master suite. Do you have any
plans to maybe sell anonymous data or anything like that? Yeah, I mean, there's the data asset is kind
of, I mean, that's a long term thing where I think if we had a big enough user base, you know,
I could imagine that that data asset would get pretty interesting. Right now our user base is,
is kind of small. We're in the neighborhood of about 33,000 users as of today. And that's growing,
you know, at 9% per week now. So that's got to annualize. That'd be about three or four thousand
percent growth. But, you know, I think eventually the idea of a data asset play is kind of interesting.
We could do something like Alexa does, which is basically kind of published for free, you know,
the, you know, kind of a zeitgeist of what people are doing with their time and sort of how that's
trending. But yeah, you know, this, obviously there's, you know, some privacy implications here.
So not only anonymized, but it would have to be only an aggregate, right? We would never say,
you know, here's anonymous, you know, user B, you know, and here's how they spend their time,
because I think you can kind of sometimes reverse engineer data like this and get back to some sort
of identity. So we really want to avoid that. Well, that sort of happened to Netflix and A,
well, they released a whole bunch of, you know, quote-unquote anonymous data. And it was proven
that some of that data can be actually, you know, tracked back to the original user.
That's nice of them to make those mistakes before we got here. So, so we get a word of, but yeah,
I mean, that's kind of a no-brainer. And we do, I mean, a big part of rescue times, you know,
feature set is pretty privacy focused. One of my favorite ones is we offer, you know,
obviously you don't want to track every single website that you go to. You might have 10 or 12,
you know, websites and applications that you use frequently. So we have a feature that's called
white lists that allows you to basically keep a list of the sites that you care about, you know,
on your computer. And rescue time will basically take that and only send information about those
websites up to our servers. Everything else will still get sent, but it will get sent in a sort of
other website bucket. So it'll it'll literally never get any other data than the websites that,
you know, that you want to send. And the rescue time data also is sent, it's basically pushed as
YAML files. I don't this is probably getting relatively geeky, but, but they're basically there,
you can see the data that rescue time sends. We do send it securely, but you can see basically
exactly, you know, on your hard drive what data we're sending. So the goal is as much as possible,
put the data into the user's hands, give them control of what they want to send and what they don't.
And once it gets here, you know, we give them control also the ability to delete, you know,
data and a selective day-by-day basis or just, you know, they want to wipe a website, you know,
if they went to monster.com and they realize, gosh, you know, I don't necessarily want my boss to
know that I'm going to monster.com. I'd like to delete that data. They can do so and, you know,
basically, you know, that's all under their control. So you have all this data, all these
bar graphs and whatnot. What can you do with this data? Can you make it do anything for you,
can you, you know, publish it in any way, anything like that? Right. Yeah. So, I mean, the first kind
of step of rescue time was to be kind of an analytics package. And we think that just the knowledge
of, you know, the ability to see this and crunch around on this data is powerfully motivating and
is pretty behavior-changing is what we've seen. We do want to kind of, and we started doing this
a little bit, but we do want to move in the direction of kind of giving people tools to help,
you know, help themselves along a little bit. So we have a goals and alerts feature.
And a TV example, you know, one of my goals is I want to spend less than 30 minutes a day on
news and blog sites. So, and I have it set up so that as soon as I exceed 30 minutes a day,
I get an SMS message, my phone buzzes with essentially a reminder that, hey, I just blew my
goal for the day and I need to get back to work. And there's also positive goals too where you can
say, I want to spend, you know, generally I try to aim for, you know, six hours of stuff that I
label as work per day, which, you know, you'd think that's not a particularly ambitious goal, but
that tends to be in the sort of 97th, 98th percentile of actual work time that people spend on a
given day. So, yeah, so I positive goals as well. And you can imagine that within a group or a
business setting, you could set it up so that, you know, if your average team member spend say 30
minutes doing social networking stuff a day, that you could set it up to send a kind of an automated
nudge to any employee that exceeds 30 minutes and say, you know, nothing that's blocking websites
or getting kind of, you know, Soviet on it. But, but, you know, something that says, hey, you know what,
just want to let you know you're now officially below average on the team in terms of wasting time
on social network. So, maybe, maybe kind of think about giving back to work. So we don't want to be
like this micro management tool. And that's why we put in a lot of the control into the user's hands.
You can't install rescue time in a stealth way so you can never put it on a computer without
someone knowing about it. It pops up every time you reboot and there's a big icon in the system tray
and like that. So, yeah, so the goal is just to kind of, you know, try to give managers some tools
that, you know, kind of allow them to not be micromanagers, but still have their teams kind of,
you know, going in the right direction and also give them a little bit of business intelligence
to understand, hey, you know, is my team, you know, when you have a small team, you can understand
sort of productivity and you can, on a good gut feeling, you can kind of say, yeah, the team kind
of feels like we're slowing down, you know, but when you have a team of 20 or 30, then also
that your ability to sort of have a gut feeling of team morale and output and productivity is,
it's pretty hard to have that. So, so we're hoping we can kind of offer an ability for a manager
to look at this data in aggregate. So, not necessarily zooming in on everyone's exact data and
really getting really deep into their data, but understanding more just kind of the team aggregate
and how that's trending. That's cool. So, what are you working on now if you can talk about any of
that at all? Like, what kind of features are you making rolling out soon? Sure. One of the big
things we're working on seeing as rescue time and at the very beginning of this, we got kind of
hammered by a couple of people like, well, why is this an online tool? You know, why don't you just
give me something I can install on my computer and use this? And where rescue time is moving is
kind of in more of a sort of social and benchmarky way so that you can imagine that a team you could
do some comparison stuff, compare yourself to the average team member, and be also compare yourself
to people like yourself. So, if you're a system administrator, you could benchmark yourself against
other system administrators. So, yeah. So, I think and the challenge that we had with that is that,
well, because we've allowed other, you know, allowed our users to kind of categorize all of their
stuff themselves, you know, basically via tags, that people's tags didn't really overlap very
reliably. So, for example, you might tag things as work, and I might tag things as productive,
which are fairly synonymous, but that makes it very difficult to compare you to me in terms of,
you know, two system administrators looking at their time. So, we are actually in the next release,
we're doing kind of these more sticky, kind of permanent categories of application and websites,
so we can kind of get a little bit more ability to compare, and then give people the ability,
and this is something that, you know, some of our users have actually really hot for, is give people
the ability to kind of publicly AC, you know, hey, I'm in the top 5% of, you know, Photoshop guys,
in terms of just sheer amount of time and effort in Photoshop, and be able to kind of publicly
represent that with kind of a, you know, badge, blog widget, you know, Myspace widget, you know,
goofy stuff like that. I don't know if you've ever heard of fat blogging that, you know, a bunch of
people who got into the concept of, you know, blogging about losing weight, right? And it's kind
of a way to keep yourself honest. And so, strangely, a lot of our users want this data to be more
public, to sort of keep them from screwing off as much as they might otherwise screw off. So,
it's kind of a weird motivation, but it's kind of a life hack, right? And it's a way to sort of,
to, you know, make yourself more disciplined than you, than you might otherwise be, which is kind of
cool. The same way that it doesn't actually just say, you know, Mozilla Firefox actually says,
what web page you're on, it would be really great if you could do the same thing with Insta
Messaging, because I find that I waste a lot of my time talking to people I really shouldn't be
talking to while I'm working. And, you know, is that feature coming in time soon? Yeah, so we,
I mean, there's, there's kind of, you know, I mean, within rescue time data, there's a bunch of
black holes. And the, the kind of black hole we attacked out of the gate was the browser. It would
be fairly useless for, for me to say, hey, you spend six hours in Firefox, you know, is that good or
bad? Well, I don't know. But, you know, there's other black holes like I am, which is, I think you're
right. That's, you know, people, you know, you could basically tag people as sort of productive or
good people to talk to or, you know, kind of goof off, buddy, kind of conversations. And similarly,
the email client of, you know, hey, an outlook, you could spend four hours in outlook as a professional,
but that could be good or bad, depending on sort of who you're talking to and, and how you're talking
to them. So, so I think there's, there's kind of other cans that we can open. We don't have the,
kind of, I am an outlook stuff on the near term. One of the other kind of near term things, which
is cool is we have a lot of demand for kind of document and directory understanding. So you can
imagine that you're working on four projects in, you know, say you're a writer and you're working
on four different, you know, actual documents for four different clients. So you're a freelance
person. So to understand sort of, hey, you know, am I working in Acme Incorporated's directory where
I have four or five different documents or am I working on, you know, client B's directory and
to kind of give, you know, people who are, who are multitasking on multiple projects, the ability
to understand, you know, okay, I'm using Microsoft Word, but, but what am I really using it for?
So that's, that's on the play too. And that's, that's probably our most demanded feature.
Cool. One of my favorite companies is Valve. They make the, like, half of two counterstrike kind of
games, right? And they're my favorite company because they're relatively small back when they
first started and they're kind of placed where you can actually call the CEO up and talk to him.
If you wanted to, it's a very transparent kind of company. If you can actually walk in and see
what they're doing, it's an open building. And when I was looking at your, like, support forms,
I really got the sense that like your company was actually talking to people in the community,
like I was actually seeing, you know, people who work there responding back. Would you say that
you're kind of community orientated in some way? There is the, I mean, you could do this company
in a lot of different ways, right? And this is something that we could build this, this big,
you know, monolith company for the enterprise and, and, you know, I'll put on suits. And we're
definitely not that company, right? We did this in a way that was kind of, you know, kind of more
for the worker, for the information worker and the knowledge worker because we, because that's what
we are. And, you know, yeah, we're small. We're three people, you know, we're pre-funding. We are
actually currently fundraising, but we're not looking, you know, we're looking for a, we're looking
to grow to a five person team in the near term, not like to grow to a 50 or 100 person team. And I
think that, you know, the best thing, you know, the best thing that we did with Rescue Time was we
put a little, you know, feedback box on the sidebar of the, basically the entire website, right?
So if you're logged in, you'll see a, you know, hey, what do you think about Rescue Time? And, you
know, and people give us, I mean, we've literally had four or five thousand messages come in through
that little box. And try to respond to a lot of them, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, the
conversations we've had with our users have been so amazing. And so, you know, helpful to sort of
shape the product in a way that kind of, you know, makes Rescue Time into something that people want
rather than, you know, it's easy. A lot of people can try to guess, you know, what kind of product
people want. But, you know, really, I think the best way, and we collectively think the best way
to kind of build a product is to, you know, launch as early as possible. And then, you know,
respond to what the users are saying and doing to try to shape it into something that, you know,
people are really excited and jazzed about. So, so yeah, so we definitely, you know, we are,
we are a high communication company. Sometimes that's pretty horrifying when I look at my own,
you know, time where I, where I spend my time. It's not as much in the development tools and a lot
in the communication tools. But, uh, at the end of the day, I think it's definitely worth it.
Yeah. So I guess it's kind of, you know, really, really soft and I suppose.
Yeah. So if people want to help, uh, what should they do? What can they do?
Well, I mean, we have, uh, we'd love to hear from people. I mean, imagine your audience is fairly,
fairly geeky. We don't have a published API yet, but we've had a bunch of people build,
some cool stuff on top of rescue time. And we'd love to hear from people, you know, with ideas like
that. We had a, a couple guys, one from Mac and one from PC who built a tool to manually push
data to rescue time. So they could, what they wanted to do is essentially track offline time,
like meetings and phone calls. They wanted to be able to push that data to rescue time. So they
built tools to do that. We had a guy make a Linux data collector and that could certainly use,
and we've had a couple people kind of, you know, checking in code for that, but there's always
probably room for help there. And honestly, just use the tool and tell us, you know, what's working
for you and what's not and what's confusing and what's not. And, uh, and help us make a better.
But yeah, I mean, it's really, uh, we just love to, and honestly, the word amount to, if, uh,
if you use it and you like it, you know, tell your friends because that's, uh, right now,
again, we're growing like 9% week over week and that's, you know, near as I can tell,
we can't take credit for any of that. It's all of our users basically, you know,
blogging about it, twittering about it, emailing their friends, you know, just talking about it,
and we get some cool press too. So, uh, so yeah, so, uh, yeah, all of that stuff would be great.
You're going to kill social networking and people find out how much time they actually spend
on these sites. Yeah, we had a, we did, and this is, uh, this should probably hit tech crunch, uh,
here, uh, they're going to write up an article on it supposedly, but, uh, we did some,
some crunching and basically pulled out, uh, about 500,000 man hours out of our database to do some
analysis on. And we found that 44% of the, all of that time represented in those top,
or in those kind of top, uh, two or three hundred applications was communication related. It was
either email, social networking, instant messaging, you know, and these are all people who,
A, people who are, you know, pretty obsessed with productivity, they're trying to be productive,
right? And, uh, you know, there are also people who can see all this data and you'd think,
so you think that our audience is probably better than most, but to think that nearly half of,
you know, production workers, knowledge workers time is spent, essentially just moving
information from one human being to another, uh, you know, it's kind of horrifying. We all think we're,
you know, we're web developers and we're writers and we're artists or whatever, but uh,
turns out we are communicators. That's rather insightful. So if people want to contact you,
what should they do? Uh, well, we have a contact page on our website and we're always open for
stuff like that. Um, you know, there's a, a forum that we link to from our help page where,
you know, people can throw out ideas as well as, you know, kind of bugs and such like that.
And of course, just using the service you'll see on that right hand side of the site,
there's a little feedback box, you know, we sometimes get one word feedbacks that say, cool,
you know, we sometimes get, you know, long essays, uh, you know, people throw out ideas to us.
So anything I can go on that box and we read every single, I mean, the whole team reads every single
one of those. So, uh, so yeah, we do love to hear from people. Where is this location?
Just out of curiosity. This is like your kind of like your house kind of thing or do you actually
have a small office building or what's going on? No, we have an office. We actually, so we, um,
this was a hobby kind of project. It was a side project. We all had day jobs up until,
the first of this year. So around Thanksgiving, last year, we, you know, as we started getting
more and more interest, we decided to apply to Y Combinator, uh, which is, uh, it's a kind of seed
funding, uh, very hacker centric kind of geek centric seed funding outfit, uh, out of Silicon
Valley, uh, led by a guy named Paul Graham, who's a pretty famous software essayist, uh, in the,
one of the big kind of list guys. Um, anyway, so, uh, so we applied to Y Combinator and they,
I don't know, they get, I don't, they don't release the numbers anymore, but they get in the
thousands of applicants, uh, you know, per six month session and we, uh, uh, we got the nod for
that. So they picked 20 companies out of those thousands of applicants and, uh, so we've been, uh,
up until the end of March, uh, up until I guess April one, uh, we're in Silicon Valley, uh,
working with Y Combinator and have since returned to Seattle, uh, and have a small office in Pioneer Square.
So yeah, so we are, uh, we are, we are a real business with a real office, uh, but it is definitely
small. Okay, if people have any, you know, questions or comments for you, do you have like an email
address or a phone number where you can be reached? Yeah, you can shoot to, uh, team TAM at rescuetime.com,
and that gets, uh, basically all three team members. Uh, and, uh, we don't actually, uh, maintain a
business phone. Uh, if you go to the contact page, you'll see a phone number and it is my cell phone.
Uh, and, uh, I, I, I take all sorts of bizarre calls on that number, but, uh, but I'm probably not
particularly eager to say it on a podcast, but it's on the contact page. So, uh, so people really want
to talk with my voice. Uh, I'm willing. Oh, can't say I blame you. Okay. Well, you know, thank you for
your time and thank you so much for being here. No worries. Thank you. Okay. See you.
Okay. Well, that was the interview with Tony Wright, the founder of rescuetime.com.
If you have any questions or comments from me, I'm not sure what you would, but if you do,
you can email me at drakenewisatgemo.com. If you need some, uh, other form of
way to contact me, um, I have a ton listed on my about page at drakenewis.com. Um, okay. Great.
Thank you for listening to Haqqa Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by kero.net. So head on over to caro.enc for all of the teams.

77
hpr_transcripts/hpr0098.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
Episode: 98
Title: HPR0098: Subversion
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0098/hpr0098.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:27:30
---
Music
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is the Miro Vinci coming to you today to
discuss the software subversion. Now subversion is a software system that was designed to replace
CVS and basically what both of these applications did was to allow for a better and easier
management of files such as documentation files such as code and in other applications,
other different types of files and managed these files through a series of versioning. Now
simply as the way I comprehend versioning is that whenever an individual checks out a file from
the database, it is or it was assigned a particular version number and then as that file gets
modified, uploaded back to the database and committed to the database, then it takes on a new version
or a new version number is then created for that file. Now what this allows individuals to do is
as multiple people are working on the same file. Although they've checked out a version of the
file which basically gives them their own local copy for them to work on, as they commit the file
back to the database, each or one person's changes do not necessarily override and void the changes made
by the other individual who check out the same file. Now instead, as a file has changed, depending on
which parts are changed, the modifications are just committed but there are other circumstances
for if they were modifying, you know, say the same block of code and their changes overwrite each
other. It definitely gets into a lot of the little nuances with subversion and how the
versioning system works and how you can manage a versioning system which at the moment is definitely
beyond me and is more than what I necessarily need. The whole purpose for me creating the subversion
server is because I know it's I know of a few administrators who have their own local subversion
server running within their network and they will use the subversion server to keep up with their
scripts that they write and configurations, configuration files for the different servers and for the
different, you know, softwares and applications and things like that and that they run on a daily
basis or, you know, or whenever they need to. In this way, as the as the job progresses and as
new files or as changes need to be made, then they can keep keep a track of, you know, what changes
were made and how they were made and can compare ultimately, you know, the different versions of
the software are different versions of their configuration throughout its use cycle and throughout
its use. So I've decided to set my own subversion server up to try and keep track of
some of the scripts that I'm currently writing, whether they're for my job or for my own personal
leisure is ultimately just a great and handy tool. Setting up the subversion server proved actually
to be a little bit difficult for me simply because a lot of the websites out there that cover
for building a subversion server were difficult to understand, difficult to interpret or in a lot
of cases were just missing necessary steps. Depending on your on your distribution that you're
running, you can either just connect to a repository and install the latest version of subversion
or you can go to subversions website and download the latest source code compile it yourself and
build it and then make it which is ultimately what I did. And you know, and once you do all these
things, there's again, there's a handful of different websites out there that explain, you know,
how to how to set through this process. But once you create all these websites, you know, you create
a local folder that you're that all of your subversion things are going to all your subversion
databases and all their necessary files are going to reside, you know, you have to make some
modifications to Apache or to the Apache Configure file. Once you've finished installing subversion,
next you need to actually create a subversion database using the SVN admin that is included with
subversion. Now, with this command, you can create a new again, create a new subversion, I guess
database is probably it probably has a better word as well as specify the database type whether you
want that to be the Berkeley Berkeley database or or the other. And probably the most important
step that is missing in a lot of these by these document documents is that you actually need to
start the subversion server before you before you try and import, you know, files into into subversion.
Now, yes, I understand that it sounds silly and it sounds stupid as in Merrill, Vengeee,
Dell, you've got to start subversion before you before you can add files. But that wasn't really
made clear to me in some of the different files that we needed. So, so for your own personal
knowledge, you need to start subversion before you start to do the SVN import and and things like
that. And you start subversion by the SVN SERVE command, which is Sam Victor, November, Sam Echo,
Rain Victor Echo. I don't know what R is. I'm sorry. But once you start that that process and you
can use the dash D command, dash Delta command to put it in Daemon mode. Once the subversion server is
up and running, you can then go through and use the SVN command to interact with the subversion server
and that's Sam Victor, November. You can with this command you can check out files from your subversion
server, you can check in files, you can diff the files, you know, which is the obviously look at the
differences in them, as well as several other options for managing your your subversion server.
There's definitely a lot more functionality to subversion and to the different subversion commands.
Definitely things I did not cover in this podcast simply because at this point I don't know those
different commands and those different functionalities to subversion, but of course like anything over time
will definitely come to me and hopefully maybe some of you guys out there are more familiar with
building a subversion server and running subversion that you know you might be able to offer any
tips and tricks and anything like that. Thank you for listening to this episode of Hacker Public
Radio. This is the Merrill Vinji. If you have any comments, questions, concerns or angry outbursts,
you can find me at MerrillVinji at gmail.com or you can usually find me in the pound in
Phenomenon IRC channel on the free node.net server. Oh and by the way I remember that R is Roger.
Enjoy.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by tarot.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-T for all of those of you.

53
hpr_transcripts/hpr0099.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
Episode: 99
Title: HPR0099: Tech Music: Blackhat Life
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0099/hpr0099.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:28:00
---
.
Through the switches and into your keyboard, across the ppx sitting in to your server, I know
every corporate security game, to get in a social engineer my way forwarding traffic
from every machine, this black hat's got his eyes on everything, voiceless top 3 SSL
Apache has worked keys and a fake photo ID, taking down your firewall, break by break,
and coming out, going sniff, sniff, sniff, my focus on your Illian is gonna make my day,
your misconfigured server's gonna be my slave, so black hat life will live in every day,
it's a black hat life in which we create, cause nothing else is worth living each day,
it's a black hat life in which we create,
credentials are a given, and they're given to me,
we social engineers give us what we think it needs,
like I look at unlearn everything I know,
my friends are weird, seeing empty LA radio, credentials are a given,
and they're given to me, when I saw your password, I felt that she was funny,
I got it with me, and before I run these commits, it feels so good to have this power in my hands,
black hat life in every day, it's a black hat life in which we create,
it's nothing else is worth living each day, it's a black hat life in which we create,
Now now now now
Now now now...
I have long hand I go to the WhatsApp, I lay up mad skills and pretend I was like
what front of my friends
Before I walk away the girl says, hey wait, maybe one night we can go out on a late
One more number to add to my list,
and it's co-operation, secur見 full shitting her ride suit
in the elevator, guess what
What? You have a dress like a janitor?
This is mine!
These are my server rules!
Like each and every one of you!
You know I'm going our groups!
Dress like a janitor!
I do this shit in person!
Open every door so I can get back in!
It's a black cat life with every day!
It's a black cat life through which we create!
There's nothing else that's worth living each day!
It's a black cat life through which we create!
It's a black cat life through living every day!
It's a black cat life through which we create!
There's nothing else that's worth living each day!
It's a black cat life through which we create!
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio!
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O-D-E-T for all of her TV!
Thank you for watching!
Thank you for watching!

558
hpr_transcripts/hpr0100.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,558 @@
Episode: 100
Title: HPR0100: Hackermedia Awards: RFA
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0100/hpr0100.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:30:43
---
This is really critical now.
At the end.
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't
know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,
You close your eyes and we're not using you
We're not speaking out loud dream
You're waiting to ask your spouse
straight youranged b To l pay off your bunch of dreams
Again tell her base you're valued
Take a rampage and take your back
Show in Р our dog on your boys
Get your fill, please, you're no good girl
The atmosphere brings you far wide
It's just that I wait for you in the run
Yes, it's not enough
You can tell by it could youление
But your mom tried to wait
I'd goì, no please, I never knew
Your father's revenge
He pushed her back to facto
Take away within
So, welcome to another episode at HBR, I'm your host Enigma, and I have a special guest
host today, want to introduce yourself.
This is Drupes.
And this is our 100th episode, and Drupes wants to give out an award today, so leave it
to you, Drupes.
Okay, well the other special guest is, want you to go ahead and introduce yourself.
This is Dool.
Good evening.
Okay, and probably some of you are unfamiliar with who this Dool character is.
But if you continue listening to the show, we will delve into such things.
The short story is he had a really, really awesome internet radio show before those
terms like podcast, or hacker media, or things like that, and he set us the high standard.
We can actually see the blushing over the phone conference.
And actually one other thing, there's a show called Crowned Pork, and they were very nice
because Enigma and I don't plan well, and they let us use their conference, they record
their show on.
I just want to give them shout real quick.
Thank you.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, thank you to that.
So anyway, we're going to delve into this award.
I run a site called Hacker Media, and Hacker Media lists all kinds of awesome free content.
And we try to filter out ads that are as far as us speeds from people that are less free,
but have good content nonetheless.
And we're doing some work on it right now to, we've always kept to the free stuff on top.
I don't know if anyone's ever noticed, but we want to put, if people that really contribute
a lot, and their stuff's really free on the top, and then the people they get paid for can be down at the bottom.
And anyway, a dual hosted this show called Radio Freak America.
And Radio Freak America wasn't the first little internet radio show, like that was in the now,
and Hacker MIND and such, and I think that they helped.
You get started because you saw that you could do this too.
I don't know what the words in your mouth.
No, that is correct.
And RFA got up to 99 episodes, which Hacker Public Radio has just surpassed as of this recording.
Even though it had more hours of content, whatever.
And RFA was hosted by dual in a cast of crazy, crazy folks.
And we're going to read all their names off later.
I don't have a piece of paper in front of me.
Yeah, it's a massively long list.
I was having to read show notes to find out everybody.
It was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
I forgot about this.
And I found RFA at like episode 20.
And I didn't know anything about all this stuff.
There was no podcasting and such.
And I started listening to the show, and I would have to download the shows,
and then I would have to move them to my little iPod or an iPod, my little iPad.
The little compact, whatever handheld.
And I would listen to those while I was driving, and I thought this was the coolest freaking thing ever.
And it was like listening to a conversation between people that were somewhat knowledgeable about what they were talking about.
And it was stuff I like to listen to.
And I was really glad I could listen to the whole thing.
I was really upset when it died.
I was like, what's going to fill this void?
And fortunately that void has been tremendously filled.
Oh, yeah.
And the last episode of this Radio Freak America show.
Dual was very emotional, and we're going to play a clip later, and you can hear him crying.
Like a baby.
Like a little baby.
As we all were, we were very upset.
But Dual was talking about an idea that he wanted to pursue, and he wanted to, like he had done RFA,
he wanted to move on from such things.
And he wanted to do this thing called Hacker Public Radio.
And Hacker Public Radio, well, once you describe what you're envisioning, Mr. Parallel.
Well, pretty much what you're doing.
Like exactly what you're doing.
I mean, and of course it's an extension of squatting, congratulations to you.
And everybody that makes HDR possible, 100 apps is, you know, nothing to scoff at.
It's exactly, it's just like tight technical shows, like something that you would hear on NPR, if it follow was, was about tech.
So you've been a great success.
Well, I don't know if you've been keeping up with the show, but we're trying to do some of the NPR-esque things,
because they do things very well, like they have all songs considered.
And we have whole episodes of just music that's nerd core, I guess, is a proper term for such things, tool.
Back music, when I labeled it, but, you know, whatever you want to leave that.
Yeah, everything, I think everything is what I love, I love the intro, I love the design, it's nice, it's really nice.
And it's got one of those handy dandy iPod RSS feeds.
It does have one of those handy dandy iPod RSS feeds.
I don't know if you'll partake, but I love my iPod and my RSS feeds for it.
That's right.
I do hate the fact that I have to own like an Apple computer to run my iPod.
I don't want to have windows in the house.
Let me recommend the Mezu M6, I got the 8K and 11, it works great.
So yeah, that's what HPR was about, and of course we talked about the last app.
We talked about it at SLIP's presentation at Hope.
You know, it just never came to be, at least for a while.
But now it exists and it's flourishing, so again, congratulations.
I think the tragic flaw of HPR is that like every other show, someone had to sit down and do it.
So the original idea of HPR, like you were envisioning yourself doing most of this work.
Yeah.
And the whole opening it up to the community has really helped a lot, because we wouldn't be here anywhere.
Like I think I've done like four episodes.
Yeah, and I've done four episodes.
Yeah.
Yeah, it just, it epitomizes community.
And it's like people we don't know.
It's really, really cool.
Yeah.
Yeah, people are bringing it.
It's great.
So anyway, back on to this award.
We want to give RFA an open award for DNRFA.
Like I think that's what we're going to put on it.
And it's going to be at hackermedia.org.
There's going to be a award staying up at the top.
And we're going to be giving it out to shows that have ceased to exist, so that we don't have to listen to hosts
or blather on about voting or tell this guy about this and all this other mess.
And it's printable and frameable so you can, anyone that was involved with RFA,
even if you just sent in like an email the dual red, you were part of RFA.
Are you serious?
That is so awesome.
So feel free to hang it up in your house.
I'm going to hang it up in my house, because apparently I wrote a letter to you,
and it's filled with profanity about the phone company probably.
Yes, yes, those are the best letters.
And those are the best.
I don't think I know that many cuts words anymore.
It was very snake-esque.
And it's profanity.
Very snake-esque.
I've been in a radio, came out of RFA.
I think it was a co-host on RFA a long time ago.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was a great experience.
And if I may, thank you very much for the award I'm honored.
And I will be printing this out in color and hanging it in my house.
This is better than a Wikipedia page, which I think is gone now, because that wacko dude is going up the leadership.
But this is really an honor.
And again, thank you and I appreciate it.
All right, so we're going to try to name all the co-hosts.
You got your kidding, right?
There's like too many, like, zany mad cap hosts that were on that show.
Are you really going to, you know, you're joking, right?
You don't really have this.
You know, I'm hobbling around with a hole in my foot from a nail that I stepped on earlier.
I met my wife's grandma in the house out in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, like you have to turn off the dirt road to get here.
Well, do you want to let me know?
You?
What are you on me to do it?
I'm sorry.
I thought like you had like a paper list.
I was like, oh my god, you made a list.
That is so hard to call her.
So you want me to name it?
I'm sorry.
I'm just going to bring it with me.
I was like, OMG.
All right.
So now I'm going to be very hurt if you forget.
No, no.
I'll do my best.
And if you started episode 20, wasn't that?
I think that was the phone lady episode if I'm correct.
Yes, it was.
Yes.
That is a great app.
She's awesome.
So hosts.
And I think we're all hosts of the show, of course.
The racks condor, right?
The ridge.
And then we had to flip.
We had sappers, stank, winter mute.
Jason Scott was on the last episode, of course.
Were you ever on troops?
No, I was not.
But just the profanity laden letter.
Yeah.
Who?
Oh, man.
I know there were more people.
It was a lockout.
Mary Chan was on it.
Oh, yeah.
Mary Chan and Skyler.
Very nice.
The female contingent.
They were lead.
I think that's a pass.
I'd have to go look.
I know there was lots more people.
So there was a lot more people.
I was going to go look at the phone lady, of course.
Anyway.
Yeah.
A large assortment of folks.
Oh, yeah.
That made the full thing possible.
Like, ah.
And one of the things that really struck me that people
really don't do anymore is that you did this every week.
Like, for a set time, every week it was out.
And like, I knew when to go download it,
because you had to go download stuff back then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was a lot of work.
I think you missed one and separately took care of it for you.
I think so.
Yeah.
Oh, and meme.
Did I mention meme?
Meem was on.
Yeah.
It was a lot.
You know, what the thing is, because it was fun,
the work kind of, you know, it didn't seem like work.
And I don't want to say it started to become work.
Excuse me.
But.
Well, as has been said many times before.
Thanks.
So how's that?
Things that might have been that long.
That's the episode coming along.
I actually have it.
I have the audio.
I've got it raw.
I've got an AP.
And I don't know if I've ever converted it.
But it's just bad.
It's audio is horrible.
It's painful to listen to.
You can understand.
You can hear and understand everybody.
But it's just so hard to listen to.
I'm thinking about just, you know, making a minute or three
and just sticking it out there.
That would be awesome.
Yeah.
Maybe I'll do that.
Maybe I'll get back.
I love that too.
I like the guy with the afro and the scarf.
So when I get back from my travel, I think I'll have,
oh, hopefully God, I hope.
I'll be at home for more than a day.
And I'll do that.
I'll whip that up.
And good, bad.
I'll just put it up.
And we'll see what happens.
I think that'll be cool.
And so like, you know, in honor of you guys, in honor of HDR,
we'll drop that on people.
Spectacular.
I think we can actually use that for an HPR episode.
So there's more we don't have to do.
But please do.
Yeah.
You don't do rapers out there.
I'm sorry.
I should more work.
I don't have to do.
There you go.
Anything that's lighten your load than England.
Thanks.
Okay.
I would also, we done talk about RFA.
Do you have anything more to say?
The only thing I want to say is that fanny packs are in.
Okay.
They are cool.
That's it.
That's all I want to say.
The views of the SprayLow are not the views of the SprayLow.
Roll a nerd tour.
Fanny pack.
Okay.
I'm actually on the fanny pack topic.
My best friend is a juvenile probation officer in New Orleans.
And apparently they have the required to carry a firearm.
And more of the options he has is a fanny pack.
And he was thinking about it.
He's like, I could have my service pistol.
It's like a clock.
It holds like 15 bullets.
It's awesome.
And he's like, I don't think they would be manly enough
to have a vany pack with a gun in it.
You can't do it like a fruit.
You know, seriously, if somebody's wearing a fanny pack
just assume there's a gun in there.
Spray it out.
Mine.
I carry I get the notebook.
I get the tone dialer.
I got the dash.
Rolling.
Awesome.
So where were you going with this?
I don't know.
Anyway, moving on from this wonderful RFA topic.
I want to add out some ideas off of y'all.
And please leave comments on the HPR site if you have ideas on this.
But my wife and I are about to endeavor to build a house ourselves.
And we're looking at all this stuff.
And it's to, I don't know, it's kind of like software.
Like if you want to be able to do this,
you have to pay this.
You know, if you want to have a plan that can be reviewed
by the people that review such things,
you have to have an official plan.
It can't be something you just drew up and said,
I want to build this.
You have to pay an architect and you have to figure out all this crap.
And I can see if you're building like a,
we're just building like a little house.
And I wanted to open source my house building
so that we could have like weekly updates or pictures
and things like that and put my plans online.
And if someone that's, you know, qualified as an architect
to draw designs could take my plans and make real plans
that others could then take and use for themselves.
And like we watch a lot of that stuff on TV whenever we're around the TV
where they're building stuff in a house.
And I don't really show really what's going on.
Like the whole do it yourself stuff.
And we want to just be more open with the information
so we can talk to people and say,
I don't know how to do this.
Can you show me and have someone over the internet help us?
Kind of stuff.
Do you think that would be a waste of time or?
No, I think it's a great idea.
I don't know if I would trust the internet with, you know,
this structure and mechanical workings of my home
but, you know, making them available online for everyone else.
How can that, how can that, how can it be bad?
Awesome.
Yeah, I think it's great.
I mean, it's not like I mentioned.
We're just building like a little house out of the country.
And we actually don't have to have like a planning commission
or a building inspector or something like that.
We just have to build it to code that the insurance company will insure us.
Really?
Because it is out in the middle of nowhere.
And I'm already going to collect rainwater and solar power
and all that other mess.
Wow.
I think that's really cool.
You know, and that'd be to extend that.
What if, you know, what if, you know, you did have approved,
you know, you had stamp drawings, you had approved drawings.
You know, could, you know, you know, how, I don't know.
I guess it depends on what state and county and city live in.
But, you know, could it, could somebody you just use those
and say, look, these are stamp of this guy?
I can use these drawings.
I don't know.
I probably not.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if we had the official plan to do with download
and pick them to kink those and get them printed.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, definitely.
If somebody could say, take it and get them to, you know,
get, go pay some guy to get the stamp.
I think it's a rat.
It's going to be where my secret hiding places are.
Exactly.
The bookcase and the...
The information's hard to find.
And when you do find it, it just full of ads and...
I don't know.
I don't really show you what I think you need to know.
I think it's great.
So, and I got asked, so are you going to build your,
literally, like, building this house with your two hands?
Yes.
How long will power tools and stuff?
Wow.
That's, that's wind right there.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm actually, I stepped on a nail today doing some light construction.
Yeah.
Maybe I should invest in some shoes that have, like, a metal plate.
Get some red wings.
You're good to go.
Wow.
That's really cool.
Anyway, I think this has been an HPR episode.
Thank you, Mr. PRLL and Mr. Enigma, for helping me out with this.
And, dual, thanks for coming up with the idea.
It's been in my head for a really long time and we've wanted to do it.
Well, thank you.
Thank you both.
Thank you everybody who makes HPR possible.
Awesome.
So...
Got an episode on my face.
Security alert, all done.
After very careful consideration, sir, I've come to conclusion that your system sucks.
Hey, I don't believe that any system is totally secure.
Remember, hacking is more than just a crime.
The number you have reached, 9-1-1, has been changed to a non-published number.
The number you have reached, 9-1-1, has been changed to a non-published number.
That's what you need to know and I need to know now.
And I might as well tell you what the plans are for the future.
Jason just busted something out and we're going to do the same right now.
I've been talking with BLAND.
There are things that we want to see out of audio that you can get on the internet.
And one of them is much more research, much more in-depth study, right, into a topic.
And then talking about that topic in an intelligent way, right?
Having show notes, right?
Having basically a document that could be a text file itself, right, as input to the show,
having something akin to a well-written, well-produced piece that you would hear on public radio,
one of my favorite pieces of media.
So we are going to create something called Oddly Enough Hacker Public Radio.
That's right, you can look at the logo now.
We already have a logo we've ripped it right off NPR.
You can go to oldscarfreefe.com slash images slash HPR underscore logo.jpaker.j if I'm not sure which.
And that is our plan.
We plan to take one topic, right, and it's not going to be this time, this week, so this is going to take one topic and we're going to delve into it.
We're going to get an expert, right?
We're going to do research. We're going to document things.
And we're going to talk about it.
And we're going to make sure that it is meaningful.
We're going to make sure that it is a little activist's got damage because we want it to be that way.
There's got to be more. There's got to be more than regurgitated in the news and talking about calling cards, right?
There's got to be more.
Having Jason having you on tonight, this was it.
This was it. This was the prototype.
The first episode of HPR was tonight.
This is exactly what I want out of something.
The insight, something that's been around years and years, you know, in the community way before.
You know, I ever thought about it.
That's the kind of stuff I want.
We already have plans for the first episode.
You know what I'm glad I'm glad I've gone this way.
I'm glad I didn't take notes because of what it's stuff to ask me going about the reasons why we're moving on from RFA.
We're moving on from RFA.
We're not quitting.
We're not stopping.
It's not dying.
And I know, and I always, and I've always realized this, you know, just looking at my logs, that the more you do things, right?
You just consistently, you know, do something on the internet at least.
People will come, you know, the numbers will grow and you'll quote prosper.
I realize that.
If the hits suffer, I don't care.
I want something more. I want something better.
I want something more substantial.
Hence hacker public radio.
We already have a plan for the first episode.
That I will not give up right now.
I already have a plan for a guest.
I already have a plan for a topic.
It will be phenomenal to use one of my favorite words.
And I believe you may already have a plan for releasing it.
Yeah, and you want to talk about that?
That's fine.
I'll definitely.
I'll definitely.
Wait until you have all full details, please.
Really? Okay. All right.
That has been well thought out ahead of time.
Yeah, yeah.
Stan, can I have Todd?
Blan and I have talked about this.
This will be good.
This will be changed that is absolutely necessary.
And change that everyone will prosper from.
The information gained, right?
The different format.
Because there are some great shows right now.
There are some awesome shows to fault radio, CCCPR, or Gamer,
and a lot you can find at audios.taxposs.com.
I just want to take it further.
I do. I really do.
That's why I announced it.
Well, dual, if I can say.
Please.
You know, one of the things that I do, obviously,
is a person who runs a site like techsoft.com.
If I look for trends, I look for events, I look for things that,
at the time, may not have seemed as momentous or important
as they were, but in fact, turned out to be.
And I certainly, in just the short time,
that I really came to understand this project,
you would undertake it with RFA.
You know, you rose up from inspiration that, you know,
one can point to the old school of pirate radio
in the 60s and the 70s, and then you look at a manual
taking over, you know, working with Pacifica radio and stuff
and inspiring people that way.
But then you start to see, you know,
the hacker mind inspiring you.
But then you take it to this, you take this online radio,
in other words, one without the infrastructure
of a public radio station like Off the Hook has,
and you take it to this other level.
It's the 720 of hacker radio that you provided with RFA,
because you end up consistently producing a dependable show
with, you know, excitement, with knowledge,
with a place where you don't leave your listeners behind.
They don't suddenly feel like they're listening
in on a cell phone call that they shouldn't have been.
They feel like they're right there.
None of your calls, none of your shows,
ever had a live performance.
In other words, your broadcasting into a wall.
You don't have that feedback.
You're not getting a live call or telling you how you're doing.
You had to basically compose the piece
before you ever heard a note was played.
And that's a skill.
And I can tell you that, certainly, as time goes on,
people will look at these 99 shows at these 4.25 days
of production.
And it will be remembered as one of the great, you know,
creations in this kind of subculture.
And I'm not being exaggerative.
I'm not trying to, you know, paint things up as they were.
I am telling you quite honestly as somebody who has studied
all these people that I have in my pantheon heroes,
like, you know, for various reasons,
Christensen and Wozniak and Goldstein,
even Dark Tangent, even people who in later times
I haven't done along with.
And I can tell you that I am proud to add you
to that group of heroes.
Oh, my.
Thank you for listening to HACRA Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O-D-E-T for all of her team.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Some files were not shown because too many files have changed in this diff Show More