This episode rated PG-13. Send your complaints here.

Podsafe Music:

• The Substitutes - Down On My Lady - PMN | Website
• Atomsplit - Americanized - PMN | Podcast RSS | Website
• The Peter Moon Band - Shine - PMN | Website
• Kevin Reeves - Shine - PMN | Website
• Freak Accident - Free To Be Freaks - PMN | Website
1. From The Outer Colonies:
   • Football News: The first game of the Intergalactic Semifinals took place at AOL-McDonalds-Comcast-Microsoft-NovaVida-Johnson&Johnson Memorial Stadium just beyond the Oort Cloud. Orion Vikings 122, Xamox-9 Raiders zero, with injuries. Sorry, Xamoxians, that’s what you get for putting your team in a league with big, scary alien monsters.
   • Local Interest: I managed to scrape all the “Narcissus” markings off the outside of the ship. Took a lot of steel wool and bleach to do it, too. Now there’s a fresh new decal all over this ship with her new name, the UTF Revolution.
2. The Teaser: There is a revolution brewing in the podsafe music world. Now that a viable, well-produced alternative medium exists that’s independent and personality-driven, the opportunity to remake the music industry from the ground up has come. Musicians can expect real media promotion to help drive sales and concert attendance. All it will take is a coordinated effort, a mission to get the listeners, podcasters, and musicians cooperating for the sake of the music.

   That time is now.

3. Promo: The Revolution Has Begun | www.podsafearmy.com
4. I met with Nashville keyboardist Kevin Reeves last night and talked about the future of podcasting and indie music. One of the things that tells me this revolution will succeed is the fact that there are podcasts and podsafe artists everywhere. As odd coincidence would have it, there are two PMN artists in Nashville with a song called “Shine”. And I know both of them personally. I used to play keys for The Peter Moon Band and I’m playing a show with Kevin on Jan. 31 at the French Quarter Caf�
5. Listener Comment: Jarrod Henry mentioned that the crowd in the background was a bit distracting. Those were actually just the folks at the launch party. Really they were. There was much drinking and carousing on the Jungle Deck that night.
6. Hacked: My website got hacked into tampered with by somebody yesterday, but honestly I’m not all that impressed. As a lifelong tech geek, I’ve known more than a few hackers and this little event was to hacking what stealing a baby’s lollipop is to organized crime. The whole affair was practically an announcement of how inadequate the perpetrator (hereafter referred to as the “cocktail weenie”) must feel.
   • The only affected part of the website was my phpBB2 message board, nothing else.
   • phpBB2 is an open-source PHP application. This means that anyone and everyone has access to the source code, so it’s less like hacking and more like copy-editing. It’s like making a mashup from multi-track studio files- any idiot with Garage Band can do that, the elites do it live from the final mixes. If you want to brag, hack something proprietary.
   • The exploit they used was a well-known and well-documented security hole, not anything they came up with on their own.
   • The Cocktail Weenie claimed to be part of some haxxor brag site, probably where they found step-by-step instructions on this exploit in the first place.
   • Real hackers don’t leave badly-photoshopped and badly spelled graphics bragging about their exploits. (Game Ower? Come on. I can’t tell where the L337 speak leaves off and the small penis kicks in.) You don’t brag online, especially when it’s a hack my grandfather could pull off.
   • The best part is that the alias they picked was the name of a Magic: The Gathering playing card. So not only was the hack easy, and probably just copied from someone else’s site, this kid can’t even come up with an original name (let alone a cool one).

   So the lessons to learn are simple: If you’ve got open-source software running on your website, make sure you backup and update it frequently to plug security holes as they’re found. If you’re a hacker, don’t go for the easy crap like this, try hacking something proprietary that might actually be a challenge.

   And for God’s sake, don’t brag about it unless it’s worth bragging about. You’re only declaring how small your penis is.

   So on that note, the bulletin board will be down because… well, frankly, nobody was using it anyway. If you want me to put another board back up, send feedback here or leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Main, Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.