Definitions of the Terms Hacker, Cracker and Coder

It was several months ago that I noticed the discussion at Jason Scotts blog about the definitions for hacker and cracker. I would add to that mix the term coder, because it will become important in the details of own definition of each of those terms.

Three important facts will I mention right from the start:

1. There are hundreds of definitions for the term hacker out there and they are all different ranging from portraying a hacker as an ethical and selfless whiz kid who does things for the greater good to the evil and selfish wannabe who cannot create stuff himself and thus prefers to destroy other people’s work.
2. The meaning of the word hacker did change over time. People used the word in much broader terms in the past and even outside of computers.
3. Mass media put their mark on the term and helped to add to the confusion and misconception.

I recommend avoiding the use of the words whenever possible, because everybody perceives and understands it different. Especially if you are using the words in a positive context are misunderstandings just waiting there to happen. Instead of cracker, use "computer-crack" or in instead of hack, use the term ”exploit” or “workaround” instead for example. However, if you have to or want o use the terms, clarify what you mean by them and not just let the terms out there on their own.

My definitions incorporate the changes in the computer industry and the fact that it is not the world of single mainframe computers at individual universities anymore. Computers became a commodity and a large number of users are normal people today, who are not geeks and often not have very much practical understanding of the matter at the same time.

My Definitions

A "hacker" is for me a person who is an "advanced power user" and not necessarily somebody who is a programmer. A person who analyses software, tests it, automates requests via tools to scan a broad range of possible options in a short time-period. A person who wants to gain access and or control over another system by exploiting known security flaws, using brute force (scanning, dictionary attacks etc.) or human weaknesses and flaws (why use parents the first name of one of their child's as password so often?). He maybe finds technical security holes by accident, but is not the one who can seek them out as well. The hacker was spending time to find out the new frequencies for ATT, MCI or SPRINT to break their lines, scanned for valid calling card numbers, attempts to find new working credit card numbers by creating similar siblings from an existing credit card that works etc.


A "cracker" is for me somebody who "eats code raw", a person who is comfortable using software debugger, mostly doing debugging at the Assembler level. A cracker enjoys dissecting other people's code and "fixes" little inconveniences and "flaws" in software, like skipping license key input screens to speed up the software installation process. Crackers are not necessarily great programmers themselves, but have a deep understanding of technology and computer software.


A "coder" is somebody with remarkable programming skills. A coder is this type of person who spends countless hours on something of little or no practical value (just by itself), just because he wants to figure it out. Things like writing a program that listens to IO operations of a hardware component and displays it on the screen, which looks like your TV screen, if you did not select a TV channel, showing nothing but seemingly random noise.

Each One Could be One, Two or all Three of Them at the same Time

A hacker could be a cracker and coder as well, but often are the three different types of characters found in three distinct and different persons. They can excel by working together in conjunction with each other and as part of a group.

I reduced my definitions to what kind of skills each of them has and less on what exactly each skill is being used for. That each of the people is often living in its own little world is probably true. The world they live in is not always the same world normal people perceive as reality.

Hypothetical Collaboration between a Hacker, Cracker and Coder

If you ask how the collaboration between a hacker, cracker and coder would look like, here is how I see it. The hacker would be the person who is in charge and coordinates the efforts. He is the one who has clear goals and ideas in his head. He would be the one, for example, who thinks up how a tool would have to work to do something very specific. The coder could write that tool for the hacker.

A port scanner for example (just to keep it simple) could be such a tool. The hacker needs a cracker, if the hacker encounters specific software and cannot get around it by using brute force or guessing. He would try to get a copy and have the cracker take a look at it to find flaws or have him create an altered version, the hacker could try to sneak in as replacement for the original.

By Default Neither Good nor Bad

Here is a positive example to avoid the misconception that it is all about breaking into something and stealing data etc. What they do and what they do it for are two distinct and very different things and independent of the definition.

The coder writes a piece of software. The hacker tests the software thoroughly and approaches it from all kinds of different angles. He does in essence the quality assurance. The cracker is the one who is looking under "the hood" and checks the software for deep build in flaws and errors.

Quality Assurance

In the example of a piece of security software would the coder write the interface to enter the password, the encryption routines etc.

The cracker checks the code to make sure that the encryption is strong enough and that nothing is being exposed that reduces the effectiveness of the protection, like loading the key pairs in plain text into the memory for processing and stuff like that.

The hacker checks more like things such as minimum keyword length, supported characters and flaws in the interface.

The best encryption is worthless if the password can only be a set of numbers and the password is three digits long = only 1000 possible combinations which can be tried out in no time, via a script or even manually.

The best protection software is also useless, if you can simply press ALT-F4 and close it and then be able to move on and do what you want to do anyway. The hacker is the one who would look for this kind of stuff.

Conclusion

That is my take on this whole thing and I am convinced that most people would be comfortable with it, if they think about it for a moment, including hackers, crackers and coders themselves.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Wikipedia NOFOLLOW Argumentation - A View Back

This was a scrap or stub on my Cumbrowski.com site with the title "What the F**k is REL=NO FOLLOW?" for a while and I decided that I remove it from there. Wikipedia is now using nofollow and the discussion is a thing of the past. However, the argumentations are still valuable as long as there is the rel=nofollow attribute out there.

I decided to post the discussion here at my blog, where I have already made a number of posts that are related to Wikipedia, my activities at Wikipedia and Wikipedia issues and discussions.

It's a lot to read and not for everybody, but worthwhile for anybody who is interested in the NOFOLLOW debate in general.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally written April, 24th 2006

What the F**k is REL="NO FOLLOW"? - Original Proposition

Presented to WikiProject Spam on 4/17/2006.

Wikipedia is not the only Site that suffers from so called "Link Spam". Every Site and especially Blogs that offer anonymous Visitors the ability to interact, comment or contribute and often even encourage it have a common problem. People that use the features to their own personal advantage without the goal to contribute for the benefit of others. From being rare cases of abuse in the past to today's frequent occurrences which became by now more than just annoyances. They became a problem.

The same type of problem with similar reasons for it's existence as email SPAM. Talk was not enough anymore. Tools and mechanisms had to be developed to reduce the negative impact of SPAM. The purpose of Link SPAM is not as apparent as email SPAM though. Email SPAM is usually send with the goal to get the recipient to open and read the email which contains a commercial offer with the hope that the reader acts and buys the offered product or service. Email SPAM has the goal to generate instant revenue and profit.

The Difference between eMail Spam and Link Spam

Link SPAM does not. The Blog Comment that is completely irrelevant for the Blog Article containing a short Message and Link to a commercial offer is not intended for the Article Author nor it's readers. If they respond to the offer "great", but that was not the original intent by the Spammer. The Link is not meant to attract "humans". It is indented to attract the invisible automated programs called "Spider" or "Bot" utilized by all major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN (MS LIVE) and ask.com to gather Web Content which is processed and later returned to Users at the Search Engine in the Search Results (SERPS) if they are considered relevant by the Search Engine for the keyword or phrase entered by the User. The results that are considered most "relevant" are returned first. It is the goal of every search engine to RANK the Web Pages that match the users Search Query by highest Relevance to the topic the user is searching for.

How work Search Engine? What is their Goal?

Search Engines use mind boggling algorithms to calculate the "Relevance" and thus "Ranking" of every Indexed Webpage relatively to the words and phrases found on the Web Page. If two pages contain the word "science", the search engine must make the decision, which of the two pages it believes to be more important, more relevant than the other to show it as first result, if a user enters the search term "science" at the Search Engines Website. If you search for "science" at Google.com, over 4 Million!!! Web Pages are found. Google must make the decision, which of the 4+ Million Pages it should show first to the User. It tries of course to return the ones first that are most likely the ones containing the information the User is looking for. How do Search Engines determine the ranking of each page? How do they determine that Page A is shown 5th for the term "science" and Page B 4,0000,000th. Both are obviously about "science" or they would not be considered for the results at all. The actual ranking is determined by over 100 criteria by Google for example.

One of the most important criteria is the so called "Page Rank" of a Page. Page Rank was introduced by Google and made them what they are today. The Page Rank algorithm revolutionized search engines and produced fantastic accurate results. Read the original scientific paper on Page Rank "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" by the Google Founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page or Page Rank Explained by Phil Craven to learn about the mathematical background of Page Rank.

Search Engine Ranking - Google PageRank

The actual equations are very complicated, but the general concept is surprisingly simple. In simply words is the "Page Rank" of a page getting higher the more other pages and sites link to it. Every Link is Vote from one Page towards another. The Linked to page gains Page Rank while the linking page looses a bit of it's Page Rank. I believe you start to understand where I am getting at and what the intentions of the link spammer are. Right, he wants to get a "Link" or "Vote" to his Commercial Website that Search Engines like Google think that the Page is more important.

The higher the Rank of the Linking Page itself is, the stronger is the Vote. A Link from CNN.com's Homepage is certainly a stronger Vote for a Webpage than a link to it from a personal Page at Geocities.com. That is the reason why more popular sites are more targeted by Link Spammers than less popular ones. Wikipedia is obviously very popular, thus a link from Wikipedia is worth a lot more than a Link from a less popular Site. Spammers are not only targeting public sites to get inbound links they also create artificial Link Farms and purchase links from Webmasters that are willing to cash in on their sites popularity. The Search Engines became actually very smart in detecting artificial inbound link inflation making Link Farms a lot less effective and even can cause the Website that is the beneficiary of this to get penalized or even banned from the Search Engine Index.

Wikipedia is the perfect Target

Wikipedia is the perfect target for spammers to get inbound links to their site(s) without risking a penalty from the search engines, because it is almost impossible for the search engines to determine if a link at Wikipedia was added because it is really relevant for the topic or just by a Spammer to increase his Page Rank. Blogs have the same Problem and Google developed a simple to implement mechanisms for the Blogger or Webmaster to eliminate the whole benefit of having an outbound link at those sites for the sole purpose of gaining Page Rank. The only purpose why a spammer is trying to place a link in the first place. Links can still be added and used by Human Visitors that are interested and click it. Search Engine Spiders on the other hand that visit the page will simply ignore the Link, it will not count as a vote for the target website.

How is that done? Very simple. Simply add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the HTML Link Tag

<a href="http://www.website.com">Link Anchor</a> becomes 
<a href="http://www.website.com" rel="nofollow">Link Anchor</a>

Conclusion

As you can see, it is not hard to do at all. The Change to the Wikipedia Code is absolute minor. The Gain and Benefits are out of the Question. Does this solve the problem completely? No, of course not! But it will significantly reduce the issue, because a huge number of Links added just because of Page Rank will not be added anymore. The benefits of having an outgoing link from Wikipedia to a site are severely reduced, but of course not completely eliminated. There remains the benefit of human traffic clicking the link. In this case is the link better highly relevant for the article or it will be removed quickly by the Wiki users anyway (without the need of an Editor to take actions).

• Visit the official Google blog attribute information and further resources.

I hope this clarifies the subject a bit more and finds some open ears somewhere and finally one of the Wiki Developers to spend the necessary minutes (few hours at the most) to implement this feature saving thousands and thousands of hours wasted by hundreds of Editors that have probably better things to do and could use the saved time for more important contributions for Wikipedia.

--Roy-SAC 11:31, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
You can find some background information about me and my professional qualifications on my Professional Homepage to enforce the credibility of my statements made in this article. My email is available there as well, if you you have any questions or anything else you would like to discuss with me outside the User Discussion Page.

The Discussion - Introduction and Summary

Copy/Backup of comments posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam.

How to save hundreds or thousands of hours by spending just a few

Roy: I took the time to summarize and explain an important aspect of link spam on my user discussion page below. Some Editors expressed the opinion in the past that the proposed solution will not help to significantly reduce the problem which I vehement reject. Even if the impact is not as much as I expect will it still have enough impact to justify the necessary work to implement the solution. Being an enterprise solution developer myself gives me the authority to make the statement that the implementation of the solution can only be a matter of hours. An amount of time that will be saved multiple times over with absolute certainty in the future when it comes to link spam removal.

This will not immediately, because the word about the change has to go around and get to the potential link spammers first. Unless it will be picked up by the media and other means (bloggers etc.), a gradual impact should be expected. I invite everybody interested in this to join the discussion. Wikipedia Developers and Admins are more than welcome to join as well.
--Roy-SAC 11:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Rhobite - Reasonable and respected Wikipedia Admin

Rhobite: You're acting like nofollow is a perfect solution to spam, but it isn't. Wikipedia has already had a large discussion about using nofollow. Mediawiki already has the technical ability to insert into links, but the community decided against it. See Wikipedia:Nofollow. Rhobite 15:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Roy: Hi Rhobite. Thanks for the Move to the Discussion Section. It is not a perfect solution, but a working solution for one (major) part of the problem at hand.

I will go over the comments at Wikipedia:Nofollow in detail. It's been over a year now since the vote. The nofollow attribute was quite new back then and the traffic to wikipedia has also more than quadrupled since last year. I assume the issue is today also several times bigger than it was back then.

The Solution works for other Systems and Sites such as Blogs very well and reduced the issue a lot. Spammers are now creating the blogs themselves via programs (using API's) though :(. A different problem which requires a different solution.

The nofollow attribute is not diminishing the true purpose of an honest placed link. It works for a visitor who is clicking on it (and hopefully finds some more useful content) the same as a link without the attribute. This little attribute restores the original idea of hyper linking, when Links where only placed on Sites for Visitors to follow, not computer programs.

Google is the no.1 search engine worldwide with 50-60% Market Share despite the attempts of Yahoo!, MSN and ask.com to compete with Google in the Search Engine game. Yahoo threw the towel this January. ask.com was gaining, but only a bit, MSN is working on the problem to get their new search up and running. The situation did not get better, it got worse. the rel="no follow" attribute should be added automatically by the Wikipedia engine to ANY external link (URL's starting with "http://"), regardless if it is an Article, Discussion Page, User Page or System Page.

There should be NO on/off switch. This should be announced loud and clear to the public, also explaining what it does and what it NOT does. I bed with you $100 that with will reduce the amount of link spam you get here at wikipedia at least by a double digit number.

Since the current policy pretty much considers most external links as SPAM (-> see recommendation to link to the Yahoo Dir or Dmoz only and that's it)) is the total number of external links placed across Wikipedia a realistic measurement to evaluate the effects of adding the rel="no follow" attribute to all external links.
Since this is a topic I do know quite a lot about, I thought that it is a thing I am able to contribute well. Since I shoot myself into the foot with proposing and pushing for something like this, any doubt of an hidden agenda on my part can pretty much ruled out. I do believe in the need of valuable external links that enrich the content of an article at Wikipedia or provide proof for statements made in one.
I don't see any reason why the attribute should NOT be added except the reason that you want Wikipedia to be part of the Ranking Game. I can imagine that some Wikipedians do not like the idea, especially the ones that have a personal interest in some of the external links to their own personal/business websites. --Roy-SAC 15:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Rhobite: My objection remains the same as a year ago: It doesn't deter spammers. Pagerank isn't the sole reason people spam Wikipedia. This is a very visible site, and if I were a spammer I would want to be linked from here, even if it didn't improve my Pagerank. A link from a prominent Wikipedia article could generate a lot of revenue for an unscrupulous person. Furthermore, Wikipedia can and should improve the Pagerank of good, relevant links. punishes operators of useful sites for the actions of spammers. Rhobite 16:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Roy: It will certainly not deter all of them, probably not even the majority of them, but it will for sure deter some of them. if something is becoming less lucrative, less people will be tempted by it. That is an undeniable fact.

You are probably qualified to provide some rough numbers here. Let me ask you this? How much spam is removed by members of the SPAM project across all pages of Wikipedia every month? Lets be very pessimistic and assume that only 1% of the spammers are detered by the fact that they only have gain from a link via visitors that read the article and actually click on that link but don't gain anything else in the long run by increasing their rank in the Google SERPS and getting (a lot) more visitors from there?

How much time would 1% less spam save? Put that number next to the time it takes to implement the nofollow attribute (which is already in the code as you mentioned). And also how much LESS links that should be in the article get removed because of suspicion that the intent might be more selfish by the person that added it than it actually was?

You say that it will not deter any spammer at all which means that the amount of spam will remain the same if the nofollow attribute was added. This statement is based on what? Intuition? Facts? Show them to me. I can PROVE to you that the reduction and even better, the complete elimination of page rank of a link will deter people from adding knowingly links for selfish reasons.

If you get the chance, talk to a DMOZ Editor of an important commercial category. He will tell you, that he still gets more submissions than he can handle, but he will also tell you, that it is much less since Google de-valued links to sites that are listed at Dmoz in their Ranking Algorithm. The "punishment" of useful sites will be less of an issue than you think. Regular Sites that can not be changed by every john and joe out there will still link to those sites.

People who discover the site because of the Link from Wikipedia will also pickup the URL and link to it (I have done that myself more than one). If a sites reaches a certain popularity, Pagerank becomes less of a factor for the ranking. An increase from a Page Rank of 6 to a rank of 7 for example is huge, it gets even harder to impossible to get to a rank of 9 (There are mayby 1 or 2 dozen sites in the world that have that).

Lets summarize. It will certainly reduce spam if implemented consequently across the site and made public, it is easy to do implement, because the Wikipedia code is already ready for it and last but not least, the affect on valuable (authority or popular) sites is minimal. If you disagree, explain why. --71.195.125.110 20:49, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
...

Stevietheman - Active Wikipedian

Well, I spent the time reading the complete Nofollow page from the intro to the votes and finally the comments. There was a lot of clutter (on both sides of the argument). I "stripped" out the comments that clearly showed that the writer had no clue about the meaning/purpose of the non-W3C-standard rel=nofollow attribute, or about spamming (link spamming and spamming in general) and especially not about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in particular Google.

The remaining "on the topic" facts and arguments for both opinions were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the attribute enabled. I was surprised to find out that "only" 41% voted to keep the new implemented feature in Wikipedia (which was obviously "enabled" by default after the update that contained it was installed) and 61% voted for its removal (deactivation).

I have to speculate to explain this result. I guess a lot of the votes must have been based on "feelings" rather than facts or other motives must have been a factor. But hey, I am irritated by the fact that you Rhobite, somebody who is affected by the spam every single day, as one of Wikipedias first line of defense against link spam is against the use of the attribute.

Anything that makes your live easier without violating any of your basic beliefs and opinions should be welcomed and even embraced by you. Is the spam problem not that bad? You should know the best. Please tell me.

Btw, I think you did a great job fixing the grammar of my additions to the Affiliate marketing article about a month ago. You have great language skills and you should use those skills more often on article content than on wasting it on banal Link Spam removals.

I am working on improving my writing skills though (it is my second language after all). Thanks. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Stevietheman In a democracy, or rather, a wikicracy, no one person can decide which votes to accept and which to set aside. We all apply our own value judgments when voting. The bottom line is that the wikicracy said we're not doing nofollow, and that's that. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 22:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Roy You are absolutely right about the democracy. The voting/election process in a democracy is essentially very simple. Everybody that is part of the society has one vote. All votes are counted equal. The value of a vote can not be reduced or increased based on qualitative criteria. Emotions and feelings influence our decisions (votes) although most people try to be as objective as possible when it comes to that.

I just noticed for that particular vote, that emotions and feelings must have played a major role, because the objective information that were available at the same time and should have played a major role during the decision making process are conflicting the actual votes.

"wikicracy said" ... "and that's that" sounds very absolute to me. Things that involve larger groups of human beings have the tendency to change over time. Those changes make it necessary for everybody to frequently check and adjust our opinions on things. Those changes can verify existing opinions, but can also make it necessary to question an opinion as a whole and change completely. Ignoring the changes and the refusal to check if the current opinion is still as valid as before lead to no good in the past.

The World History is full of cases where absolutism, ignorance and stagnatism caused a lot of pain and suffering, to eventually end very sudden and very violent.--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 04:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Stevietheman Even as somebody who detests link spam, I have always objected to using "rel=nofollow". The central reason is that by using it, Wikipedia is basically saying "We wish to not contribute any information to search engines that may aid in people finding the material they are seeking." In short, this would be an anti-search, anti-Internet move in my opinion. The value of search comes from how web documents relate to each other. Extricating the tremendously important resource that is the Wikipedia from this overall process would in turn remove a lot of value from Internet search. And I will jump up and down and up and down again if that helps in preventing the Wikipedia from ever making such a foolhardy decision to implement nofollow.

Now, add to the above the other common reasons for being against it, including "doing this won't really deter spam", which I also agree with. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 22:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Summarizing Statement and Conclusion

Roy I disagree on the statements that the rel=nofollow are anti-search and anti-Internet. I agree that it will have some impact on search, to be precise, search results at Google.com. It will be a positive and negative impact with the negative one further declining over time to something negligible.

The positive impact is, that the junk that is currently in Wikipedia will loose ranking and be replaced by hopefully more relevant content in the Google SERP's (I am referring to ANY part/page of the Wikipedia site that is accessible by the public, not just articles).

The negative impact is, that good content that is being linked to will drop (may be) as well, but I strongly believe that when it comes to highly relevant and good external sources linked to from active and live article pages will be marginal.
"Real" high quality content sites and pages have very often a pretty high and honest (intended) PageRank. The loss of the vote by the one link from Wikipedia will have little or no impact.

Furthermore, PageRank is very specific to Google. Ranking based on "Back Links" evaluation are a very small factor for the Yahoo! Search Engine and virtually none for MSN. Google is the only SE where it really matters, but Google has a 50-60% market share.

The rel=nofollow attribute was introduced by Google itself for sites that meet certain criteria. Wikipedia is certainly fitting the description of sites where Google recommends the use of the attribute. This contradicts the statement that the use of the rel=nofollow attribute is being anti-search.

Anti-Internet is also not being the case, on the contrary, it is as Pro-Internet as it can possibly get. Links to other Websites were never intended for programs and scripts. They were meant for human visitors from the beginning. The rel=nofollow attribute will not change this but remind people of the true purpose of linking between websites. Back to the Roots.

This Article from Gary McHugh called "Stinking Linking Thinking" from a month ago hits the Nail on the Head. It explains very well the original intentions for the use of the HREF HTML Tag. A friendly reminder for everybody who has all but forgotten this after all those years of mutilation , rape and abuse of those beautifully simple and user friendly tools.

Last but not least, I still would like to know some facts and details that made you come to the following opinion: "doing this won't really deter spam". So far does it look only like a believe or feeling to me without any objective grounds to stand on. I hope you can help me with that one. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Roy Here is an interesting post about the "nofollow" attribute by Matt Cutts (Who is a Senior Engineer at Google). He bloged about it here. Arguments coming from such a highly knowledgable and respected authority might convince some of you more than I was able to. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 13:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject:Spam Opinions and Facts wanted (Invitation)

After writing longer and longer invitations to join the discussion and provide input and idata on some Wikipedians Talk pages did I end up with this rather long one which I intend to continue to post on other Users Talk Pages from whom I believe to be able to contribute to the collection of facts and past experiences. I encourage anybody who wants to help and knows a Wikipedian who might be able to provide valuable input for this cause, to grab this paragraph and post it and the Wikipediants Talk Page or simply link to it. Here is the Link Code

[[User_talk:Cumbrowski#WikiProject:Spam_Opinions_and_Facts_wanted_(Invitation)|<u>'''WikiProject:Spam''' Opinions and Facts wanted (Invitation)</u>]]

The Link will look like this: WikiProject:Spam Opinions and Facts wanted (Invitation)

Hello my fellow Wikipedian!
I know the following text is long (no kiddin'), but I thought I'd rather present the details upfront than having you guessing them. There is no "Due Date" which means, that there is no need to rush and the need of dropping the things you are currently doing :). I'd rather have you take your time with it when you have it and are also in the mood for it, than rushing over it without giving it much thought and dumping it on the done pile.

Introduction and Summary

I am looking for Wikipedians that are interested in and knowledgeable about the Issue of Link Spam at Wikipedia to express their opinion about some of my recommendations to reduce it based on my research and experiences with it due to my professional background. I believe, that you one of them, that fits the "profile" perfectly :).

My Opinion and my Request to you

It seems to be an "old" and "done" subject, Even a vote about 15 months ago was conducted about it. All what I found out and collected about it makes it seem like an open issue rather than a thing that was settled for good. Too few facts were presented and not much (if any) quantifiable/measurable information were provided.
I would like you do go over the stuff I collected and consolidated so far and provide your point of view regarding this. If you have already done so in the past, simply reference to it that I can check it out.

I am also looking for some statistical information to be able to assess the real extent of the problem (and not just the felt one) as well as it's development over an extended period of time. If you have already anything like this or know how to get it, let me know. If you don't, but can point me into directions and/or people that can, let me know as well.

Tech-Stuff

It's really appreciated. You can get technical with me, I have the necessary background for it. You can check that on my User Page. I come the Microsoft/IIS/SQL Server/VB/.NET Environment, but I have some general understanding of the technology and ideas behind it which are mostly platform independent. I do know basic PHP and also installed recently the latest MediaWiki Version 1.5.8 and MySQL Server for Windows Version 5.0.19 on a Windows 2003 Server with IIS6 and PHP5 Extension. I can use this installation for some Tests or Script Development which den might be used at the Live Wikipedia. Probably Scripts for Data Collection and Assessment only. I do not intend to develop anything to make changes to processes and features of Wikipedia.org. If it happens that something that could be used in the future comes out of it, fine. I do not intend to write anything for myself, whatever comes out of it will be Public Domain (Open Source without any restriction for it's use at all).

My Intensions and Goals

I wrote similar Invitations on Talk Pages of other Wikipedia I came across, but this one is the most detailed version of it in regards to explaining my intentions and purpose of the whole thing in great length and depth. I would appreciate, if you would invite other interested Wikipedians that are authorities in this area to give their input as well. I would like to keep the ones, that only know little details and have only general/common knowledge about this kind of stuff out of the discussion for now to prevent it from getting dispersed right at the beginning and turned into a rhetoric discussion. Nothing will come out of it, if only one "belief" group argues against another, based on speculations and feeling rather than facts and solid numbers. An open for all discussion will have to happen at some point in time, but it should be later, when enough data and information are available to have some solid ground for a general discussion for everybody that gets at least a chance to end in actions that will benefit everybody at Wikipedia and its many users in the long run.

Sincerely --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

New ASCII and ANSI Art Galleries

When I added the SAC section to my site and new galleries with ASCII, ANSI and pixel art that were not created by me, did I say to myself "why not add other great art to the site as well".

Neo Tokyo ANSI by Somms/ACiD

I was also inspired by Sixteencolors.net who did an amazing job of making ANSI art available to look at on the web.

Razor 1911 ANSI by Zebig/Razor 1911

I don't want to create a file archive where you can find a lot of art, but have to download it first and use special software to be able to look at it. Jason Scott over at Textfiles.com is doing a great job doing that.


The new galleries are only the beginning. More will come over time.

Okay check out the new ASCII Art Gallery and the new ANSI Art Gallery.

ASCII Skull - taken from the
Night Rising World ASCII by Olli/Black Maiden

Famous Che Guevara head shot.
Taken from the MIM NFO ASCII by m0/Chemical Reactions

New Gallery Feature
You will notice in detail page of the ASCII art pieces new buttons in the top left: "Snapshot Image", "Text Version" and "Original (DL)".

Razor 1911 NFO file logo by JED/ACiD

"Snapshot Image" is the default display mode. The ASCIIs (and ANSIs) are converted with a tool called PHP AnsiLove to a PNG image. This happens in real time based on the original ASCII or ANSI file. The result is very close to the looks of the text art in MS DOS.

"Text Version" is what it says, the real text version of the ASCII. I wrote a converter to convert ASCIIs to Unicode. The font used is "Lucida Console" for the display on the web.

I am not sure if looks right on all systems and browsers, which is the reason that I did not make it the default display option.

I want to write a converter for ANSI as well, which converts the ANSI.sys "escape codes" to HTML. It is not done yet, thus no buttons are available in the details of the ANSIs yet.

Avatar FTP Site Advert by Darrix

"Original (DL)" was there all the time. It is also available at the bottom of the page for ANSIs. It is the option to download the original .ASC or .ANS file to your local hard drive.

I hope you will like those new additions to the site. Feel free to leave any comments and suggestions here at my blog.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Fucking A - It's About Time!

This is a very personal post, but I have to blog it somewhere. I could not post it at ReveNews.com nor at SearchEngineJournal.com so my personal blog has to take the "hit" hehe. It uses some unusual strong language what should not come as a surprise, if you look at the title of this post :).

I just wanted to warn you.

Okay, I touched the subject already in previous posts of mine, such as "American Made - or Wasn't It" or "Immigration Issues, YouTube PERM Video and Backgrounds". I also mentioned my issues at my post "VNV Nation saved the day (okay, my day)" so it’s not all new and out of the blue.

Okay, here it comes...

I got my fucking Green Card today!!!!!

Here is a picture of that damn piece of plastic that needed over five years of constructing and manufacturing by the American bureaucracy



Yes, five plus years of pain and sorrow are over! God damn it!
Okay, better hehe. For details and some background, check out my immigration resources page at my family website at Cumbrowski.de, of course only if you are interested in this :D

And guess what, this is also my 100th post here at my personal blog. If that isn't a coincidence... Yeah, "double celebration" ... Is it possible to get double-drunk?! I guess that would be called coma hehe.

I am sorry for the foul and strong language, but it had to be ... this time. I am sure that you understand and able to forgive me for that. If not, go to hell hehe. Just kidding. Thanks.

Cheers
Carsten (permanent resident) aka Roy/SAC

DefCon 15 Session and Panel Videos - Batch IV - Final Batch

Yeah, I've done it! All videos from all DefCon 15 presentations/sessions and panels are now up on Google Video to watch for free.

All 4 batches combined are a total of 125 videos that are sold on 10 synchronized DVD-Roms in Quicktime format (.MOV) for $499.00 (okay, I paid "only" $299.00).

Here is Full DefCon 15 Session Listing in PDF format. It's sorted by tracks and presentation numbers and is easier to print out. The PDF is about 1.7 MB in size. See the resources further down below for the download of all presentations and extras of DefCon 15.

The Session Videos - Batch IV (Final)

Use the links in this blog post and the three previous posts to access the videos directly or perform a search on Google Video.

Use as search term "DefCon 15" in combination with the presentation number, e.g. "T539" for the "Internet Wars 2007" Panel (see this example link and query for "DefCon 15" T539).

Previous Batches

1. DefCon 15 Videos Batch 1 (47 Videos), selected videos from all 5 tracks
2. DefCon 15 Videos Batch 2 (17 Videos), remaining videos from track 1
3. DefCon 15 Videos Batch 3 (36 Videos), remaining videos from track 2 and track 3

Here is now the fourth and final batch with the remaining 25 videos for the last two presentation tracks.

Remaining Session and Panel Videos of DefCon 15 Track 4

1. T403 Picking up the Zero Day; An Everyones Guide to Unexpected Disclosures by Dead Addict
2. T405 Bridging the Gap Between Technology and the Law by John Benson
3. T406 Protecting Your IT Infrastructure From Legal Attacks - Subpoenas, Warrants and Transitive Trust by Alexander Muentz
4. T407 Digital Rights Worldwide: Or How to Build a Global Hacker Conspiracy by Danny O’Brien
5. T408 A Journalist’s Perspective on Security Research by Peter Berghammer
6. T409 Teaching Hacking at College by Sam Bowne
7. T410 Faster PwninG Assured: New adventures with FPGAs by David Hulton
8. T411 Ask the EFF (Panel Discussion)
9. T434 Technical Changes Since You Last Heard About Tor by Nick Mathewson
10. T436 Tor and Blocking - Resistance by Roger Dingledine
11. T439 Securing the Tor Network by Mike Perry
12. T442 Real-time Steganography with RTP by |)ruid

Remaining Session and Panel Videos of DefCon 15 Track 5

1. T501 Vulnerabilities and The Information Assurance Directorate by Tony Sager
2. T502 Meet The VCs (Panel Discussion)
3. T507 The Hacker Society Around the (Corporate) World by Luiz Eduardo
4. T508 Creating and Managing Your Security Career by Mike Murray & Lee Kushner
5. T509 kNAC! by Ofir Arkin
6. T531 Hack Your Brain with Video Games by Ne0nRa1n & Joe Grant
7. T532 How to be a WiFi Ninja by Pilgrim
8. T534 The Science of Social Engineering: NLP, Hypnosis and the Science of Persuasion by Mike Murray & Anton Chuvakin
9. T535 Black Ops 2007: Design Reviewing The Web by Dan Kaminsky
10. T538 Stealing Identity Management Systems by Plet

More Resources

1. DefCon Media Archive - 8+ GB videos, mp3 audio, PDFs, PowerPoints and tools from previous DefCon's, primarily from DefCon 13 (2005)
2. DefCon CD-ROM ISOs - Somebody put up the DefCon CD-ROMs of the last five conferences up for download. The CDs are in ISO format. Included: DefCon 11, DefCon 12, DefCon 13, DefCon 14 and the latest one from this August, DefCon 15.
3. DefCon 15 Session Audios - Only temporarely available at that location. 1.32 GB and 123 files. Its on my SendSpace account and will expire in a week or two. I have about 16 GB in bandwidth available.
   A new place for the audios is already being organized, also another location for the videos to download them in their original .MOV format.
4. Buy the DefCon Synchronized DVD-ROMs - 10 DVD-Roms for the "bargain" price of only $499.00 from "the Source of Knowledge" website. Yeah, right. I rambled about it in my post for DefCon 15 Videos Batch III already.

Okay, enjoy the videos!

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

DefCon 15 Session Videos - Batch III - Uno Mas

This time did I had again a few issues with Google Video. Three videos were uploaded and shown as successful in Google Video's desktop uploader tool, but are nowhere to be found on the Google Video website. Did I mention that the upload speed is damn slow too?

The Session Videos - Batch III

This is the 2nd largest batch of all four batches. It contains 36 videos. The first one had 47, the second one only 17 and the last one will only have 25 as well. 47 + 17 + 36 + 25 = 125. Oops, I miscounted the number of sessions in my first post. I thought it would be 122 videos only. Well, the more the merrier. :)

I just finished the download of the content from the DefCon website. They have the sessions of DefCon 13 (2005) up for the most part, in video and audio format plus the presentations and extras. All in all about 8 GB of data :). If their numbering system means anything, then there seem to be a few presentations missing for unknown reason. Also no sign of any video or audio recording from DefCon 14 last year.

Btw. If you want to buy the DVD-ROMs rather than watch them online, go to this website and get them for the bargain price of $499.00. (I got them for the super-bargain price of only $299)... I know what you are thinking... WTF?

Rambling
Right, the price of the recordings is ridicules high. Wasn't the mission of DefCon to raise awareness about security issues and holes in systems that admins and users can take steps against it?

Most security guys in the world are not able to make it to DefCon.
Video is a great medium to communicate a number of issues to people who were unable to attend and listen to the stuff in person. I bet that a lot of those guys also don't get the expenses paid for spending $300 or $500 on a set of educational DVD-ROMs.

DefCon should make them available for free on the Net and the DVD-Roms for a price that covers the manufacturing and delivery cost. It would be great PR and advertising for the show. DefCon could use a service provider that allows to require registration to access the free videos to build n email list to send conference updates to and some very targeted and limited advertising.

To pay for the video production by a professional 3rd party service, raise the DefCon admission fee by $5-$10. There would be a good argument for the raise of the fee. Attendees will be able to watch sessions they visited and also the ones they skipped in favor for another for free from the office or home. $5-$10 extra does not sound an awful lot for what people would get in return for it.

Outsourcing the production of the videos is fine, but the selling and distribution of them by a 3rs party is not. Something to think about.

Remaining Sessions for DefCon 15 (2007) Track 2

1. T203 Z-Phone by Phillip Zimmermann
2. T204 OpenBSD Remote Exploit and Another IPv6 Vulnerabilities by Alfredo Ortega
3. T205 MQ Jumping by Martyn Ruks
4. T208 Revolutionizing the Field of Grey-box Attack Surface Testing with Evolutionary Fuzzing by Jared DeMott, Dr. Richard Enbody & Dr. Bill Punch
5. T209 How Smart is Intelligent Fuzzing - or - How Stupid is Dumb Fuzzing? by Charlie Miller
6. T210 INTERSTATE: A Stateful Protocol Fuzzer for SIP by Ian G. Harris
7. T211 One Token to Rule Them All by Luke Jennings
8. T231 Multiplatform Malware Within the .NET-Framework by Paul Ziegler
9. T233 44 Lines About 22 Things That Keep Me Up at Night by Agent X
10. T236 Virtualization: Enough Holes to Work Vegas by D.J.Capelis
11. T237 Homeless Vikings, (Short-Lived bgp Prefix Hijacking and the Spamwars) by Dave Josephsen
12. T241 Greetz from Room 101 by Kenneth Geers
13. T242 Estonia and Information Warfare by Gadi Evron
14. T261 The Completion Backward Principle by geoffrey
15. T262 Boomstick Fu: The Fundamentals of Physical Security at its Most Basic Level by Deviant Ollam, Noid, Thorn, Jur1st
16. T263 Locksport: An Emerging Subculture by Schuyler Towne
17. T264 Satellite Imagery Analysis by Greg Conti
18. T265 High Insecurity: Locks, Lies, and Liability by Marc Weber Tobias & Matt Fiddler

Remaining Sessions for DefCon 15 (2007) Track 2

1. T302 Aliens Cloned My Sheep by Major Malfunction
2. T303 Breaking Forensics Software by Chris Palmer & Alex Stamos
3. T305 Cool Stuff Learned from Competing in the DC3 Digital Forensic Challenge by David C. Smith
4. T306 Windows Vista Log Forensics by Rich Murphey
5. T308 CiscoGate by The Dark Tangent
6. T311 Hack Your Car for Boost and Power!by Aaron Higbee
7. T331 A Crazy Toaster: Can Home Devices Turn Against Us? by Dror Shalev
8. T332 IPv6 is Bad for Your Privacy by Janne Lindqvist
9. T333 Injecting RDS-TMC Traffic Information Signals a.k.a. How to freak out your Satellite Navigation by Andrea Barisani
10. T335 Unraveling SCADA Protocols: Using Sulley Fuzzer by Ganesh Devarajan
11. T336 Hacking the Extensible Firmware Interface by John Heasman
12. T339 Kernel Wars by Joel Eriksson, Karl Janmar, Claes Nyberg, Christer Öberg
13. T340 (un)Smashing the Stack: Overflows, Counter-Measures, and the Real World by Shawn Moyer
14. T341 Remedial Heap Overflows: dlmalloc styl by atlas
15. T342 Thinking Outside the Console (box) by Squidly1
16. T364 LAN Protocol Attacks Part 1 - Arp Reloaded by Jesse D’Aguanno
17. T365 Entropy-Based Data Organization Tricks for Log and Packet Capture Browsing by Sergey Bratus
18. T366 Securing Linux Applications With AppArmor by Crispin Cowan

- 1st batch of session videos
- 2nd batch of session videos

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

DefCon Session Videos - Batch II

Sorry for the delayed 2nd batch of DefCon 15 session and panel videos, but Google Video had issues this week. The up-loader was not working at all for a while and then followed huge delays because of their random tests of content to make sure that it does not violate their policies jadajadajada.

The Session Videos - Batch II

This batch contains the remaining videos of track 1. I will continue to work on track 2,3,4 and 5 and hope that Google will not have as much issues anymore that I can publish the videos faster.

To demonstrate to you how sorry I am about the delay, here three goodies to change your mood.

1. Def Con Media Archive. The media archive has hundreds of megabytes of content (PDF's, Tools, Code, PowerPoint Slides, MP3 and MP4 movies) from the past 15 Def Cons available for download
2. DefCon CD-ROMS for Def Con 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15. I mentioned it in the comments of my post for batch one, but I am sure that a lot of people missed it
3. Def Con 15 sessions Audio - All audio recordings of the Def Con 15 sessions. They are only up for a limited time, because I put them on SendSpace.com and the storage time there is limited. I am looking for a permanent place for them to store on the net and will let you know when I found one. Until then, use this opportunity and download them now (about 900MB)

Okay, now to the main event, the promised Def Con 15 Videos, part II.

1. T101 - Making of the DEFCON 15 Badges by Joe Grand
2. T102 - Q&A with Bruce by Bruce Schneier


3. T103 - Turn-Key Pen Test Labs by Thomas Wilhelm
4. T104 - How I Learned to Stop Fuzzing and Find More Bugs by Jacob west
5. T105 - Convert Debugging - Circumventing Software Armoring Techniques by Danny Quist & Valsmith
6. T106 - Functional Fuzzing with Funk by Benjamin Kurtz
7. T108 - Intelligent Debugging for vuln-dev by Damien Gomez
8. T110 - Comparing Application Security Tools by Edward Lee
9. T133 - Pen-testing Wi-Fi by Aaron Peterson


10. T134 - Hacking EVDO by King Tuna


11. T135 - Multipot - A More Potent Variant of Evil Twin by K.N.Gopinath
12. T136 - The Next Wireless Frontier - TV White Spaces by Doug Mohney
13. T138 - GeoLocation of Wireless Access Points and "Wireless GeoCaching" by Ricky Hill
14. T139 - Being in the Know... Listening to and Understanding Modern Radio Systems by Brett Neilson
15. T141 - Hardware Hacking for Software Geeks by nosequitor & Ab3nd
16. T142 - The Church of WiFi Presents: Hacking Iraq by Michael Schearer
17. T165 - Intranet Invasion With Anti-DNS Pinning by David Byrne

Don't forget:
DefCon 15 session videos Batch I

Enjoy!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

All DefCon 15 Session and Panel Videos - Batch 1

I know that somebody will be pissed and mad at me right now, but who gives a fuck :). Here is the first batch of videos of 47 sessions and panels (of a total of 122), from the world largest hacker conference, DefCon 15, which was held on August 3 - 5, 2007 at the Rivera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

All videos together is a set of 10 DVD-ROMs!!! full of movie files. Bear with me while I am working on getting the rest of the videos up on-line. It's a pain in the ass and a lot of tedious work.

The Session Videos - Batch I

The videos are sold commercially for several hundred dollars, but who has that amount of money flying around, right? Okay, I paid the money. So you are welcome.

And anyway, isn't DefCon not about making exploits and scams public? I make them public, alright? Not the way some might have planned, but that is not my problem. I did not get the "Black Hat" sessions and have now second thoughts about it. They cost much less if you ordered it on-site. Damn, I hope somebody else will put them up on the Internet.

Okay, the first batch includes the following sessions, which are IMO the most interesting ones.

1. T536 - The Edge of Forever - Making Computer History by Jason Scott from TextFiles.com who also did the documentary BBS - The Documentary, which is also available on-line at Google Video.
2. T539 - Internet Wars 2007 (Panel Discussion)
3. T503 - Anti Spyware Coalition (Panel Discussion)
4. T504 - Disclosure Panel (Panel Discussion)
5. T505 - Dirty Secrets of the Security Industry by Bruce Potter
6. T506 - Self Publishing in the Underground by Myles Long, Rob "Flack" O'Hara and Christian "RaD Man" Wirth, founder and leader of the artscene group "ACiD" who did in 2004 a presentation called The Art of Textmode, the history of ASCII art, which is also available at my videos section.
7. T107 - Tactical Exploitation by H.D.Moore & Valsmith
8. T166 - Biting the Hand that Feeds You - Storing and Serving Malicious Content From Well Known Web Servers by Billy Rios & Nathan McFeters
9. T109 - Fingerprinting and Cracking Java Obfuscated Code by Subere
10. T111 - Meet the Feds (Panel Discussion)
11. T112 - No-Tech Hacking by Johnny Long
12. T131 - The SOA/XML Threat Model and New XML/SOA/Web 2.0 Attacks & Threats by Steve Orrin
13. T137 - Creating Unreliable Systems - Attacking the Systems that Attack You by Sysmin & Marklar
14. T140 - The Emperor Has No Cloak - Web Cloaking Exposed by Vivek Ramachandran
15. T161 - HoneyJax (aka Web Security Monitoring and Intelligence 2.0) by Dan Hubbard
16. T162 - Hacking Social Lives: MySpace.com by Rick Deacon
17. T163 - The Inherent Insecurity of Widgets and Gadgets by Aviv Raff & Iftach Ian Amit
18. T164 - Greater Than 1 - Defeating "Strong" Authentication in Web Applications (for Online Banking) by Brendan O'Connor. I blogged about that session and put the slides from the presentation up on-line.
19. T207 - It's All About the Timing by Haroon Meer & Marco Slaviero
20. T201 - Church Of WiFi's Wireless Extravaganza by Church of WiFi's
21. T202 - SQL Injection and Out-of-Band Channeling by Patrik Karlsson
22. T206 - Virtual World, Real Hacking by Greg Hoglund
23. T212 - Trojans - A Reality Check by Toralv Dirro & Dirk Kollberg
24. T232 - Malware Secrets by Valsmith & Delchi
25. T234 - Click Fraud Detection with Practical Memetrics by Broward Horne
26. T235 - Fighting Malware on your Own by Vitaliy Kamlyuk
27. T238 - Webserver Botnets by Gadi Evron
28. T239 - The Commercial Malware Industry by Peter Gutmann
29. T240 - CaffeineMonkey - Automated Collection, Detection and Analysis of Malicious JavaScript by Daniel Peck & Ben Feinstein
30. T301 - Analysing Intrusions & Intruders by Sean Bodmer
31. T304 - Re-Animating Drives and Advanced Data Recovery by Scott Moulton
32. T307 - When Tapes Go Missing by Robert Stoudt
33. T309 - Hacking UFOlogy - Thirty Years in the Wilderness of Mirrors by Richard Thieme
34. T312 - The Executable Image Exploit by Michael Schrenk
35. T337 - Hacking your Access Control Reader by Zac Franken
36. T338 - Security by Politics - Why it Will Never Work by Lukas Grunwald
37. T361 - Hacking the EULA - Reverse Benchmarking Web Application Security Scanners by Tom Stracener & Marce Luck
38. T362 - Network Mathematics - Why is it a Small World? by Oskar Sandberg
39. T363 - Beyond Vulnerability Scanning - Extrusion and Exploitability Scanning by Matt Richard
40. T401 - Disclosure and Intellectual Property Law - Case Studies by Jennifer Granick
41. T402 - Computer and Internet Security Law - A Year in Review 2006-2007 by Robert Clark
42. T404 - Everything you ever wanted to know about Police Procedure in 50 minutes by Steve Dunker
43. T431 - The Market for Malware by Thomas Holt
44. T433 - Routing in the Dark - Pitch Black by Nathan Evans & Christian Grothoff
45. T435 - Social Attacks on Anonymity Networks by Nick Mathewson
46. T438 - Saving the Internet With Hate by Zed Shaw
47. T441- Portable Privacy by Steve Topletz

I was writing about one particular session already twice here at my blog, here and the second time here.

It's the session with Brendan O'Connor titled "Greater than 1: Defeating "Strong" Authentication in Web Applications". If you did not believe me, watch it with your own eyes and hear it with your own ears.

Here is the video of that session. There is unfortunately no video recording of the discussion that happened afterwards in a different room, but I think that the session will be enough to open some people's eyes.



Got it? Gee....

Update: Get the DefCon 15 Session Videos Batch II remaining sessions from track one.

Update II: Get the DefCon 15 Session Videos Batch III remaining sessions from track two and three and ...
DefCon 15 Session Videos Batch IV (final batch) remaining sessions from track four and five.



Enjoy the videos! Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The Colors of YouTube Custom Players

The announcement of the YouTube custom player feature is already a while old and I even created a player, but never used it yet.

I thought it is time to show it to you :).

Here is a custom player with all my YouTube Videos (stuff I uploaded there)

Update. I removed the one player, because that account I were talking about was closed. I have several other accounts now.

Here some players for my favorite play lists... such as the EBM Playlist



Here is another one, my Cirque Du Soleil Play List, which has my favorite videos and videos uploaded by me at YouTube about Cirque Du Soleil.



Noticed something? Right, different colors hehe. You can also select between two styles of players, The one for the EBM play list uses the smaller format. I am not sure if I like it, but the video selection comes kinda cool. Mhh...

Sweet, isn't it?

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Smack My Bitch Up

I was just browsing around a little bit at YouTube.com and found a video, which I remembered well from a couple of years ago. Its a video from the British band "The Prodigy". They have a tendency to create controversy with their music and their videos, some might even say "crazy", but what means crazy in this day and age?

I like a number of songs from The Prodigy, among my favorites are "Firestarter", "Narayan", "No Good", "Out of Space" and "Breathe" ... and this one...

Be warned, this video was even "too much" for the much more open European TV stations. MTV Europe had to take it off the air because of massive numbers of complaints by concerned parents and organizations. I think that taking it off the air was not a good decision. The video was not glorifying abuse and violence. I would say that it did exactly the opposite.

I don't think that anybody with a single functional brain cell left would be encouraged to mimic the behavior shown in the video. It is not an unrealistic depiction of things as it is often done in Hollywood movies. People that behave like this do exist and the video shows very realistically all the "fun" and "ugly" aspects of this.



Full Length, Uncut Version of the Music Video by "The Prodigy" titled "Smack My Bitch Up"

Warning! Viewers Desecration Advised!
Not Suitable for Children.

- Extreme Explicit Content
- Foul Language
- Drug Abuse
- Alcohol Abuse
- Nudity
- Depiction of Unsafe Sex
- Uncivil Behavior
- Violence

I hope I did not miss anything, but you get the idea. :)

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC