• Introduction: Written by linear
• linear's Review of Defcon 8: Written by linear
• Harry Tuttle's Review of Defcon 8: Written by Harry Tuttle
• RBCP's Review of Defcon 8: Written by RedBoxChiliPepper
• Rufus T. Firefly's Review of HOPE2k: Written by Rufus T. Firefly
• Destroying Arcades For Fun and Profit: Written by Rufus T. Firefly
• RedBoxing in 2000: Written by hal0
• Top Ten Signs Your Son/Daughter is a Phone Loser: Written by Phractal
• Grand Theft Auto 2 Explosion Overflow Expoit: Written by Phractal
• Simple Port DoS Attacks: Written by Jolly Spamhead
• Internet Port List: Written by Jolly Spamhead
• The Real Jolly Spamhead: Written by Jolly Spamhead
• Letters To UPL: Written by Various Losers
• Disclaimer

Introduction Written by linear

Apologies for how late this issue is. But with Defcon, my trip to Hawaii, and my procrastination, it almost had to come out this late. So this issue is for both July and August, but by next month we'll be back on track with our normal issue-a-month goal, hopfully. This issue is mainly Defcon stuff, but maybe you'll find some other interesting stuff in here for you. Yet another three more articles by Jolly Spamhead. The guy just won't stop. But all in all, this is a terrible issue and you should stop reading right now! Go! Save yourself!

We Came, We Saw, We Were Escorted Out - linear's Review of DEFCON8 Written by linear

There I was. Friday, 11:59, and I was in Summer School. Dammit! If it wasn't for my dumbass failing Algebra (yea, i failed Algebra. Shut up.) i could have left Thursday and been partying at Defcon by now! Ah finally, 12:00 hits and my ass is out of there. I go home to get my shit together, and then it's over to Tuttle's. I pick him up at about 12:30, say bye to his dog, and we're on our way.

Ah, Las Vegas. At temperatures of 112 degrees and up, it's not the ideal place for a convention held in the middle of the Summer. But I guess it's not up to me. We check into our hotel room, a pretty shitty place, and go out looking for Alexis Park, home of Defcon2000. It wasn't hard to find, we just had to follow the trail of pasty white kids with cool hair. As we walk our way through the pool area, Tuttle notices a guy wearing a Phone Losers of America shirt and points him out to me. I recognize him as el_jefe (zak) from PLA fame. I decided that if it was that easy to spot el_jefe, finding rbcp would be a breeze, and don't bother asking el_jefe about him. el_jefe has no idea who I am anyway. That was a mistake.

We pay our $50 each and get our official Defcon passes. Oh how I wish I still had my pass so i could scan it and show you all my neato name on the super-cool Defcon pass. But unfortunately, it will never be seen again (I'll get to this later). Now that we're in, we should find rbcp. We look, and we look, and we look. He's no where to be found. But we did run into Jc and StrLit (his girlfriend) in the "Haxor Speaking Room". He was a dumbass though. He didn't want to do anything cool. He stayed for a few speeches and then left for the day. What a jackass. After watching some speaches we decide to wander around the place. The rave room was cool, but pretty empty, The Capture The Flag/People Sitting Behind Tables Selling Their Shit™ room was the happening place to be so it seems. We hung out in there and bought a few things, then on our way out I ran into Short Circuit. I had never seen the guy before, had no idea what he looked like, but for some reason I knew instantly it was him. He has a certain aura to him I guess. We talk to him about Noam Chomsky, Zines, Abbie Hoffman, and what-not for a while and get some food. On are way through the convention, we get a discussion going about Linux, BSD, and BeOS with some guys sitting at a table. One of them is burning a bunch of CDs (anything you asked for, he could get it) for everyone. I start talking to him and request a few CDs, and look down at his pass to see what his name was. It was LiNERR0R! I had talked to this guy a few times in the PLA Discussion list, and always hated how everyone confused the two of us because our handles are so similar. We talk about that for a while and kinda hangout. Then 11:00 rolls around and it's time to watch Hacker Jeopardy. Some guys from attrition.org made up one of the teams. All throughout the show I was yelling out things like "attrition sucks!" and booing them, even though I actually like attrtion. I had the idea of throwing the cup of water I had on one of their faces, but it was just a joke. Then we realize it would be cool to do a prank like that, and we remember that Cult of the Dead Cow would be speaking the next day. If there was a prank to be done, surely, these are the people to do it to. We would silly string cDc during their speech on saturday! The plan was made.

At 3:00 the convention was pretty much dead, so we gave Short Circuit a ride to his hotel, and me and Tuttle stopped to get breakfast at Denny's or some such similar place. The food sucked, and we were tired. We went to the hotel and crashed.

After little sleep, we were at Subway to get a bite to eat. After That we drove all around Las Vegas looking for a place that sold Silly String. After finally finding some at a Wal*Mart, we bought four cans and headed to the convention. The anticipation was terrible. It would be a few hours before cDc was to speak. We watched a few other speakers give insanely boring speeches on such dull topics as spoofing IPs in Linux and what not. Finally, we found ourselves frontrow of the cDc speech.

"We already know there is no way we can beat last year's show, so we're not even going to try. So this should be rather uneventfull"

And then two losers pop up and spray down the cDc with Silly String. We run for the doors, only to be stopped by Security, kicked out of the convention, and stripped of our Defcon passes. We hung around the pool area (this was not an official part of the convention so we couldn't be kicked out of there) until the speech was over. Short Circuit (who got to stay since he refused to help us out, the bastard) told us that the cDc told everyone that they payed us to do it once we were kicked out. Damn. Then I saw Death Veggie of cDc walking are way and asked him where my payment was. He just kinda smiled and said, "come with me guys".

So we followed. I wasn't too sure if he was pissed or not, until he started saying how cool it was that we did that! He took us back to the cDc room at the convention and he gave us cDc embroided patches and some COLAVision.com shirts (?) and all the other guys there told us how cool it was and how unexpected and all. Then they asked if we wanted to sign the "Cult of the Dead Cow Bible". It was crazy, cDc, a group that's never ceased to amaze or inspire me, was telling ME that I was cool, and asking ME to sign the cDc Bible! We took a few pictures with them and left.

We never got our passes back, but did manage to sneak into the convention. As Tuttle and SC hung out around LiNERR0R, I decided to walk into the Capture The Flag room. Some guy noticed I was wearing a PLA shirt and offered me some free PLA stickers. I looked at him and recognized that he was Logic Box of System Failure (retired PLA-influenced zine) and friend of rbcp!


He leads me to rbcp, and I get to meet the father of all things Phoneloser for the first time. We talk for a while and I take him over to Tuttle, SC, and LiNERR0R. We all hang out for a little bit and get pictures of rbcp and Logic with that weirdo Carolyn Meinel of HappyHacker.org, just because she's dumb.

We didn't get to hang out long with rbcp because me and Tuttle had to leave that day (too bad we couldn't stay all three days). We said goodbye and were headed back to boring old Upland, California. And that was that. Soon I should have some pictures of the event posted on the site, so watch for those. See you at DEFCON9!

Hacker Jeopardy, cDc and Silly String: A Newbie's Review of DEFCON8 Written by Harry Tuttle

Day 1: The Journey
Well well well. Where to begin. It all started when linear came to pick me up that fateful Friday afternoon. We started out on the road to Las Vegas at about 12:30, though I can't really remember because it's been a week since Defcon and I've probably forgotten a lot. Anyway after a few hours of Jerky Boys (who suck I might add. rbcp is much better.), Rudimentary Peni, and Noam Chomsky cd's, we were there. Las Vegas in all it's hot and sleezy glory. One especially memorable thing was the sign at our hotel advertising the amazing "XXX Hypnotist." Wow!

The first wonderful thing that happened was when I spilled the remains of linear's strawberry milkshake on my hand. So now it's 112 degrees and I've got sticky milkshake on my hand. Defcon had better be good dammit! We drive around for a while looking for the hotel and then we spot some nerdy people with what look like name tags around their necks walking around. We must be on the right track. So we find the Alexis Park Hotel and pull up. I can imagine what the mainstream media would say (actually I've read some articles and they did say things like this). "Hacker convention full of multi-colored hair, piercings, and laptops." I felt right at home.

On our way over to the main table I hear "Hey Emanuel!" and this guy with a hat and long hair turns around to talk to someone. linear says to me "Hey, that's Emanuel Goldstein...media whore!" Anyway were standing in line to pay and there's some activity next to us. "Hey, I don't care if you ARE speakers and are on in 5 min. You have to get a pass" Hehe, sooo organized. Once we had our passes we went off to check out exactly what was going on. The pool was surrounded by hot and sweaty people (well it was in the 100's) many of them wearing all black. Only a few were swimming. Then we realized we should also be looking for rbcp because he should be here. Were about to go back in and I see a guy with a PLA shirt on but we don't ask him if he's seen rbcp. Damn. Once inside we see dozens of people with their lap tops plugged into the walls. We have to watch our step as we creep down the hall. Since we have no idea where we are going - we open the first door. Wow, full of even more nerdy people with computers (well that is the point of defcon). Tables were set up around the walls of the room while capture the flag (trying to hack into the other guys computer without getting hacked yourself) took place in the middle. Lock picking booths, subversive literature like _How to Steal an Identity_ and _How to Break and Enter_. The room next door had a speaker talking about how to get your privacy back from corporations by making a new identity. His name was John Q. Newman and I took notes and ended up buying one of his books.

A little farther down the hall was the ‘rave' room. Now when I think of raves, although I've never been to one, I think of drug induced orgies of loud techno and chaos. This had the loud techno but hardly anyone was in there. Except for the few hardcore guys who knew how to dance with glow sticks most people just stood around. I guess people don't come to Defcon for the music.

Well at about 11:00 Hacker Jeopardy started. I knew some of the questions. The ones that didn't have anything to do with hacking. The way it went was that whenever someone got a question wrong they had to drink a cup of beer. Another plus was that the Vanna White role was filled by Bad Kitty from badkittycam.com. Every time a contestant got a "daily double" right they got to take off an article of kitty's clothing. Unfortunatly there were only 4 daily doubles that night and the people from attrition.org got one wrong. So linear had the idea of throwing water in their faces. Actually he had that idea before they messed up the daily double. So we started thinking about a prank like that. Then linear though "hey, Cult of the Dead Cow is talking tomorrow, they're a lot more well known then attrition. Lets do something to them.....Something like silly string....hmmmm." So the idea was born, we were going to silly string cDc.

Day 2.
After about 5 hours of sleep we were up, out the door, and on a journey for silly sting. Finaly after about 3 stores Wall Mart had some. Once we got to Defcon we began plotting our prank. We thought that we would probably get kicked out but we had to leave that day anyway. Also, there was going to be the media there and we could get publicity for our site so it would be worth it. cDc was gonna talk at 2:00 in the Haxor room so we went in there at 1:40. It was packed. Once that speaker was done they told everyone to get out so they could set up. Fuck, now what are we going to do. I know, lets just walk around like we are leaving but not actually leave. So we made are way up to the floor right in front of the stage. By that time they stopped caring if people left. It was perfect, we were as close as we could get. We saw this lady who was with the media who had wanted ideas for pranks from us last night. So we told her what we were going to do and she filmed us while we discussed the plan. The guys who were setting up kept saying "if you guys are going to sit here you have to be ready to get wet." We also heard that cDc threw blood into the crowd at H2K and that they have pyrotechnics. By that time silly string didn't seem like a big deal anymore. But it still had to happen. So then they start coming up and sit down. One of the guys says "we can't beat last time so we won't even try, this will be uneventful." Right after he said that we jumped up shook the bottles and sprayed them with two bottles each. Then I took a hand full of UPL cards(who's the media whores now? We are!!!) and threw it into the crowd of media people. We made a run for the door and were stopped by some lady. "Hey, shouldn't you be kicking us out? Why are you stopping us?....Aren't you part of the show?....No....hey, you should get us out of here....Don't worry, we will...you're out of the convention...Get these guys out of here" So we were escorted out of the room and had to give up our badges near the pool. We went inside the lobby because it had a tv showing what cDc was talking about. One of them was pulling pink silly sting out of his hair. We were saying stuff like "wow, we did it...look at them....cool" This guy behind us probably figured out that we had done it and wasn't very impressed. "Whatever" he said. Then we went to the door to see if cDc was gonna come out. Short Circuit (who was carrying a broken laptop that a guy in a gurilla suit had thrown on the floor. There were also guys in Grim reaper suits throwing fake meat into the crowd) told us that they said they paid us to do it. There was this guy who was covered with fake blood walking out. Now I'm kina glad we left the room. So when one of them came out we asked for out money. He said he would give us some stuff. So we talked with him (his name was Death Veggie) and he gave us cDc patches, a shirt and had us sign the cDc bible. I can't believe it, they wanted OUR signature. They were really cool and thanked us for spraying them. Later we would stop by and ask if they knew where our Passes were. Apparently Count Zero from cDc had them but he disappeared. So no souvenirs for us. Then we snuck back into the convention a few times to talk to LiNERR0R and kept getting kicked out. But the security guards were cool. Everyone was cool, except that lady who kicked us out. She was the only lame one there. We brought out our red boxes and tried them on the phones. LiNERR0R whipped out his kick ass custom lineman's hand set and tired to beige box the wall because one of the payphones was ripped out (and some urinals were taken out because they were filled with cement...hehe). As all of this was going on I noticed that this guy kept staring at us. I had seen him earlier, he always kept to himself and didn't talk, just worked on his lap top. We thought he might be a fed. I was a little scared so I deleted the red box tones on my recorded. I asked LiNERR0R if he knew the guy. He didn't but said the guy asked him for something, something hacker related, so he was probably cool. Phew. Then it was time for linear to call his dad at the hotel to pick us up. He kept calling and calling but no one picked up. Finally I saw his dad at the other side of the room looking at us and snickering. He motioned to not let linear know he was there. But finally I told him. His dad had been doing pranks on us the whole time, too. Damn Him. Well wondrous Defcon was over for us. The next day I was on the net looking for articles on Defcon that mentioned us. None. God damn it. Oh well the prank was still fun. But this guy we met did have an article all about him with his picture so that was cool. So here's the review part. It was cool. You should go. Yah. What a shitty article. Now you know that you should never read an article with the word "newbie" in the title.

This Thing Called Defcon - rbcp's Review of DEFCON8 Written by RedBoxChiliPepper

So I went to this thing called DefCon and now I'm going to write about it. We were stupid enough to book our flights with PriceLine.com which got us better rates but really crappy flight times and days. My flight left Illinois at 10:30pm on Thursday night and arrived at 1:00am Friday morning.

LogicBox was supposed to meet me at the airport but he was 20 minutes late so I ended up leaving with these two old people who were there. Well, actually they were my parents. See, I had never met them before and this DefCon was my first time ever meeting them (long story). So I'm proud to say that I'm probably the only person who's ever met their parents for the first time at a hacker conference.

I arrived at the Alexis Park Hotel on Friday morning and was lucky enough to get there before the registration line started wrapping itself around the hotel. I paid my money, got my badge and walked around in the lobby. I walked 2 full circles around the sitting area. Then I ventured outside and walked up to the pool. It got hot so I walked back inside for awhile and got a Coke for the low low price of $2.00, tax included. Then I walked around the eating area in circles and back into the lobby. I walked over to the pay phones and slapped some PLA stickers on the phones. Then I walked around the lobby some more for a few minutes. Much later I walked out the front doors and discovered that I could hang a right, walk along the side of the building and get into the lobby through the side doors or from the pool area. So I did this a few times and then did it again in reverse. Then I walked around the pool area, through the courtyard and to another pool, around that pool and turned around, then repeated the process. From there I walked a few more circles in the hotel lobby. This is where I started to get kind of bored. I walked up to a guy standing by a wall.

"Hi, are you here for Defcon?," I asked.

"Yeah."

"Cool."

I walked back down the hall towards registration so I could walk around the registration lines and see if I knew anybody and a DefCon Goon was like, "You can't go in there!" and I said "It's okay, I'm RBCP!!" and he threatened to take away my badge and throw me out. So I had no choice but to go down the street to Subway and have something to eat. I got a footlong sandwhich on white bread, turkey, lettuce and mayo and a large Pepsi. It was really good. On the way back some nerdy kid beat me up for looking stupid. That really sucked but only lasted for a few minutes because I pretended to be unconscience.

I went back to the hotel and made a bunch of phone calls to people who were supposed to be there but none of them answered their phones. After sitting around in the lobby for awhile, The Public and Nekid Amy approached. We walked around for awhile, went up to his room and I got to meet Zens who I hadn't heard from for awhile. Just an hour or so later I got a call from LogicBox who told me to come into the con room and find their table. Funny, because I'd already passed by his table a few times and had a look at the shirts they were selling but I guess we didn't notice each other. I went up to the table and stared him down until he said, "Oh, hi!"

Pesto was there and broke into tears and started telling me how much he loved me and how cool I was and stuff. Then he jumped up onto a table and started dancing for me and that's when I left the con room forever. Okay well, that didn't really happen. Awhile later I met up with el_jefe and Apok0lyps and I walked around with el_jefe for awhile and finally told him that he was really boring and I was going to go find someone else to hang out with.

That night we geared up for a huge party in barkode's room! We got all kinds of booze and black lights and a big-ass sound system. Then el_jefe came in and started dancing this scary jig in front of me and soon after that some dude's girlfriend puked all over the floor. Just as things were getting crazy I noticed that it was after 10:00pm which is way past my usual bedtime so LogicBox said I could stay on his floor at the Excalibur so I went there and went to sleep, however I DID stay up to nearly 11:00pm watching dumb 80's movies. Man I'm nuts sometimes.

Throughout the weekend, me and Logicbox caused as much trouble as we could on the FRS frequencies. The FCC thought these channels would be used by a few family members at a time to keep in touch at the malls or while camping or whatever. I bet they never thought that a few thousand hackers would all be using the same channel at once. This made for some interesting conversations with people we didn't know. We kept yelling at everyone to get the hell off OUR channel. They would yell back that it was THEIR channel. We would tell them that we bought the channel from the FCC just last week and we had the receipt to prove it. They would start yelling obscenities and playing tones at us. It was like being on a conf. only on a much larger scale.

We also yelled at girls when they came on the channel, told them that girls didn't know how to use radios, girls belong in the kitchen and not at hacker cons, girls shouldn't be wasting time on the radio when they could be pleasing a man. Needless to say, the girls didn't think this was very funny.

Hmm, so that's about it for my DefCon experience. I finally got to meet linear but it took so long to find him that by the time we met it was almost time for him to leave. Damn you, linear! By the time you read this review I should have my DefCon pictures up so visit my home page at www.phonelosers.org/rbcp and follow the links.

HOPE2k - HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH - RTF's Review of H2K Written by Rufus T. Firefly

Yes! HOPE 2k. 2600 Magazine's very own hacker con. Running from Friday, July 14, through Sunday, July 16. The east coast's answer to Defcon. It was easy for me to get there, what with living an hour away from the city (New York,) and since I'm the only UPL guy out here I was representin' on my own. And represent I did..

DAY ONE
Okay, I was looking forward to H2K for months. I had never actually gotten up off my ass and went to one of these before so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I knew that if nothing else, I wouldn't miss a minute of it.

So, of course I overslept by about 4 hours.

At any rate, I got there at around noon on Friday. The con was at the HOtel PEnnsylvania, right across the street from Penn Station. (Nostalgic types note: this is the place you get if you dial PEnnsylvania 6-5000, in the 212 AC.) I had been planning to meet up with some of my pals from the NYC 2600 meetings, but I didn't recognize anyone right away so I went straight in.

There were 3 different tracks of panels and events, so I took in a couple. Soon I bumped into my pals Compudroid, Nitephreak, and Zenostrifer, and we milled around a bit.

In addition to the panels there was a terminal room with a bunch of dumb terminals running on a T3 line round the clock, a combination network room and flea market where everything from t-shirts to stickers to security stuff were being sold, as well as an impressively jury-rigged network containing just about one of each kind of computer made since 1982, and a big conference room where the movies and such would be shown, as well as some panels, and music and DJs when nothing else was going on.

At this point, my pals and I were sitting in the big conference room while they were setting up some lighting and DJ equipment, and we became really interested on what was on the magnetic stripe that was on all our H2K badges. Bizarrely, nobody at the con had a magstripe reader, so Compu and Zeno acquired an armload of parts from Radio Shock and set about building a piece of broken equipment to try and read something off the stripe. Later, we were in an elevator with well-known previously incarcerated hacker Bernie S. Upon hearing that we were interested in the stripes, and had just expended a chunk of spare time and energy trying to get something together to read it, he calmly replied, "Oh, there's nothing on them." How did he know, we aksed? "I made them." Grrr...

Around this time we met DeadRinger, a cool fellow with fangs who happens to live in the same town as me. Small world! DeadRinger, it turned out, had actually sprung for a hotel room at the Pennsylvania. (I hadn't taken a room, planning instead to hop a train home and back when necessary.) So we hung out there for a while, playing with his scanners and his big souped-up Beige box he installed in a plastic toolbox.

Later, I broke off from the group to take in some air (they all smoke, I don't) and some more panels. I met up with my pals Gonzo and Simon Magnus, and later my pal Sergey. Soon, we lost Simon, who had to split for some reason, and Sergey hadn't arrived in time to register so he had to investigate a way to get a pass (he didn't sneak in at all, no sir) so Gonzo and I hung around on line for 2600's film premiere, Freedom Downtime.

This premiere will live in infamy in the scene for many years to come. After the big room was filled to capacity, the line was diverted to another, smaller conference room where panels had taken place. It took something like an hour for them to get the movie started, since they were having trouble getting the patch through to the other suite. Spirits were high regardless, and random songs and shadow puppets broke out occasionally during the wait. I snapped a cool photo of a big movie screen showing taskbars and error messages. It didn't come out that great, though.

And then there's this movie... to say it kicked ass wouldn't begin to do it justice. For those who don't know, it's a documentary 2600 has been making for the past 3 years or so on the high-profile hacker cases involving Bernie S. and Kevin Mitnick, as well as just hacker-dom in general. For info, hit http://freedomdowntime.com as I just don't have room to satisfactorily go into it here..

After the flick, Gonzo, Sergey, and I went for some fine dining at Chez McDonalds, and we split up for the night. I hung around out front for a while. (The con pretty much owned the sidewalk in front of the Pennsylvania for the duration, with all us weirdos hanging out and scaring the locals. This is where I gave away most of my UPL business cards.) Then I went to the terminal room, the idea being that instead of hanging out at home on Friday like a loser and IRCing all night, I could go to a once-every-few-years social event, filled with hundreds of people who share my interests, and IRC all night. I then retired to the big room, where the lights were low, a DJ was bustin' out a killer mp3 playlist, thin stage smoke hung in the air, and Winamp dominated the big screen. A few ravers were curling around the screen and swinging phosphorescent tubes. I might have joined them, but I was sure I'd somehow make waving my arms around in front of my face and curling in odd directions whilst swinging snap-n-glo sticks on strings just look stupid. So, I stretched across some chairs and turned in for the night. I have always prided myself on my ability to sleep in any position, under any conditions. Some huge speakers and a flickering Winamp skin two rows away were no match for me, but the next morning nobody would believe I didn't have chemical help.

DAY TWO
After waking up around 8am in a nearly abandoned conference room, I wandered around for a bit, brushed my teeth in the men's room (with a toothbrush I grabbed earlier and snapped in half so I could keep it in my vest pocket, phear me. Of COURSE you wanted to know that.) I ended up back at DeadRinger's room for a bit, where Compu, Niters, and Zeno had crashed (and I mean crashed.) DeadRinger and the guys in the next room over were hanging out in the single room created when Compu, from what I gathered, had busted down the connecting door in a Jackie Chan inspired moment. (Why he felt the need to do this I'll never know, since there were only males in the next room.) Most of the combined residents of the two rooms were asleep save for me, DeadRinger, and Compu, and we threw stuff out the window and watched that action series with Hulk Hogan and some infomercials for a bit (DeadRinger's a big infomercial fan. I liked the one with the weight-loss guy who classifies overweight people into shapes. "You, lady, are a classic 'spoon,' while this guy is a 'funnel.'") I grabbed another hour of sleep on the floor, since everyone else passed out.

That was the last I saw of DeadRinger, Compu, Zeno, and Nitephreak as they were kicked out the next day, reportedly for throwing stuff out the window. That's their story and they're sticking with it.

After waking up I went upstairs to the conference room, met up with Gonzo, and we caught the "Old Timers" panel, featuring Captain Crunch and The Cheshire Catalyst. This was easily one of my favorite panels, and I had a flashback or two to the days of BBSing and PKZIPing text files under minimum compression to tweak my upload ratio. Crunch and Cheshire couldn't have been cooler. Later (or was it the next day? I forgotted) Cheshire even posed for a picture with me, which is cool for me but isn't saying much for him. He then took one of my business cards, which says even less for him.

Later, we went to see keynote speaker and former Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra. This was in the big conference room, and again we had to wait a while as Jello was late. The room once again filled to capacity, and they once again ran a link to the other panel room to compensate. In fact, the room was so full I wondered if there would still be room for Jello. (Fill the rest of the joke in yourself.)

He finally arrived after regular crowd-pacifying announcements ("Jello is in traffic." / "Jello is around the corner." / "Jello is in the elevator." / etc.) Still, spirits were high, and so were some of the attendants. Jello gave a pretty good speech, about current legal crap, politics, copyright law, free speech, and all that kind of goings-on. It was definitely worth it.

Some time later, Sergey found a P-touch labelmaker in the terminal room, and we started playing with it. I printed up a sticker proclaiming "RTF is a jackass" and burned some film in my disposable by snapping photos of this sticker on various things around the hotel until the adhesive wore off. I tried to get a civilian lady in an elevator to hold it up for a photo, to which she and her guy laughed and replied in perfect Ebonics, "Y'all ain't from New Yoke, is you?"

After returning to Le Chateau du McDonald for a light lunch, and hanging out chatting to random people about random stupidity (real-life IRC!) Gonzo, Simon, Sergey and I headed back to the big room for the Cult of the Dead Cow extavaganza. The place was definitely overpopulated, and it was all in the big room (which wasn't quite big enough, so they drew back the folding elementary-school-gym partition that separated the network room from the big room so the audience coul bleed farther back, standing on chairs and tables and ATX minitowers.) The crowd was too much for my pals, but I persisted, since it was cDc, dammit! It started with a perfectly respectable playlet adaptation of Romeo and Juliet involving cows, aliens, anal rape, and two girls in lingerie (a surefire hit in any roomful of computer geeks,) went on to a discussion by BO2K author Dildog to the effect of "Stop asking me for BO support, I have better things to do so I set up a discussion board somewhere to keep you all busy, and stop asking me how to get someone's IP from their ICQ number," and descended into a cheezy lip-synched rap thing. But hey, I got two of the stickers that they chucked into the audience, so phear me.

Later, in the network room, Bernie S. drew H2K badge numbers out of a hat for a few radio things. By the time the grand prize of some sort of $300 pirate radio station thing came up, a crowd of anxious folk were gathered around Bernie, nervously grasping their badges. Simon and Gonzo just happened to wander toward the drawing when Bernie called the grand prize number, and it was Gonzo's. "I shit you not," he proclaimed. And is he into pirate radio at all? "I am now," said he.

One adventure I had twice during the course of the con involved the hotel staircase. Most of the con was happening on the 18th floor. The top floor. And there were so many hackers coming and going in a constant stream that the elevator cars were almost always filled to capacity whenever a panel or event was starting or ending. This overcrowding sets of a grating alarm whenever the weight limit is breached, which was every single trip. So me and my pals chose on two occasions to take the stairs to the grond floor. Down eighteen floors. This must have seemed like a good idea at the time... er, times... but my calves still won't speak to me for this. Owch.

That night I went home, emailed a bit, and slept in my own bed. Just for the occasion, though, I put my speakers up near my bed, stuck on an Information Society disc, and cranked Sonique way up.

DAY THREE
Most of this last day was spent hanging out. I only saw one panel, and that was Emmanuel's Social Engineering panel (this time I was in the other room watching the live feed.) The video went out for a bit, but it was still funny as hell listening to Emmanuel call telco security asking about a memo mentioning something called "social engineering" and "what's that all about?" It was also funny when Kevin Mitnick joined the panel via telephone, and a fellow called Rebel (you may have heard him calling in on "Off the Hook" on.. erm.. any episode) asked him how to get unlisted numbers.

At Mickee' le D's later I continued what had become a quick H2K tradition of calmly spending a large amount of the meal with a straw sticking out of my ear. There is truly no place like NYC, as almost nobody ever took notice. I had to resort to going up to random people with this straw sticking out of my ear and politely asking them if they've seen my straw anyplace. Oh well, if nothing else it amused my friends and one elderly Asian lady by the bathroom.

As things were splitting up, I gazed forlornly toward the Hotel in all its splendor, and silently wished I could get together more often with a large group of my fellow phreaks, hackers, and others who share in my interests and get at least half of my jokes. Then I remembered, the 2600 meeting is in a couple weeks.

See you all next time!

(requisite eleet-speak--->) d4 m4d sH0uTz t0: Compudroid, Nitephreak, Zeno, Gonzo, Simon, Sergey, Leo (you should have been there, dammit,) Venadium (you should have been there too, booger! On account of you I had to take my own pictures,) DeadRinger (Spoon-ass!) Seuss (one of these I'll have to not buy you a drink,) the whole nyc2600 crew, those pleasant fellows who hosted the h2k orgy (I did you guys a favor by not going,) that one big scary big large scary huge scary massive guy on the security staff with the "Big Daddy" shirt, the killer DJ who played the InSoc remix, and all you lemurfuckers who went to Defcon without me.

Destroying Arcades For Fun and Profit Written by Rufus T. Firefly

Ah, the humble arcade. For some of us hopelessly ancient phonelosers (those of us over, like, 20) the word may bring forth images of darkened, mysterious rooms filled with a vast array of glowing screens, each beckoning you... challenging you. Pac-man... Asteroids... Space Invaders... a simple quarter being the only sacrifice demanded of you... Jesus Christ, I'm old.

Of course, with the wisdom of age I can't help noticing how much arcades have declined over the years. Nowadays, they just suck, plain and simple. Any and all decent arcade games are available in a just-as-good (if not better) version for your home console or PC, and that's if your local arcade has taken enough of an interest to get anything newer than Street Fighter 2 anyway. And let's not forget the prize redemption games, where you need only spend ten dollars on Skee-ball to accumulate enough tickets to get yourself a neato plastic ring worth half a cent.

In this article I will discuss a few ways to even the score.

FREE STUFF
There are a few ways to scam free stuff from arcades. For free games, the most common and easiest method it to simply go up to an attendant, and say you lost your coin(s) in a game. Most of the time, the attendant will go over to the game, plop in his/her own coins, and there you are. Arcade games that run on coins of any kind jam up or skip coins all the time, so you may well be telling the truth. Or, "accidentally" kick the game's plug out of the wall, and then say you didn't notice it was off before you put in your coins, or that some bastard unplugged it on you. Don't worry about looking like an idiot, since 90% of customers are idiots anyway.

Prize tickets are easily scammed. Most places have a system where you can turn in some tickets, and get back a coupon or a voucher of some sort worth that amount, so you can take it home and save up for the really good cheap shit. Get one of these for any stupid amount. If it's a hand-written form as opposed to an electronically printed receipt, you can bring it home and erase the writing. If you have a really really good printer, you could do some funky scanning and photoshopping to accomplish this. Or, you could go all low-tech and simply use white-out and a xerox. Either way, you should be able to make yourself a perfect blank voucher, assuming you use the right paper. (Ticket counter attendants handle hundreds of these things a day, so they probably WILL notice if it's a different type of paper.)

Now that you have a blank, mimic the handwriting from a genuine one and scribble in any big number you like. (Although for some reason, writing "a million bajillion" never seems to work.) Some places have to get a manager to endorse vouchers worth over a certain amount of tickets before giving them out, so try to find that out as well. Save it for a week or so, and then return to claim your prize. Now you can finally get that three-foot tall sawdust-filled Pikachu doll you've had your eye on! Woo-hoo!

ANARCHY IN THE ARCADE!!!^%@$&
So you've had a little fun at the arcade's expense, now it's time to have FUN at the arcade's expense. Here are a few ideas to get you started...

• Unplug a game while someone is playing it, preferably when they're on a high level or racking up a high score.
• Use a small pin to poke holes in the basketballs from the basketball machines. Or, just steal them.
• Find some of those stupid ticket games where you have to roll rubber handballs down a chute, and steal the balls.
• Start a skee-ball game, and throw all the balls into the next lane over.
• Start a skee-ball game, and coat the balls in vaseline before rolling them back in.
• Steal the balls from the skee-ball lanes, leaving one ball in each. Use them wisely, as stray skee-balls have been known to kill.
• Put the skee-balls into the basketball games, and the basketballs into the skee-ball games.
• Bring some apples and oranges, and roll them into the skee-ball games.
• This one works on the really old yellow and brown skee-ball lanes... If you can get around to the right side of the machine, look where the balls sit in the chute. Feel around underneath, and find the small pin that keeps them sitting there. Pull downward and the balls will roll out for free. You won't score points or anything, but it kills time, and what else is an arcade for?
• Stick anything you can think of into coin slots. Classics include gum, folded up prize tickets, french fries, sugar packets from the coffee shop, raisins, body parts, etc. Elmers glue can do especially well (it'll dry really fast, since those little lights will warm it up.)
• After these, try doing the ticket vending slots, so nobody will win their prizes. Boo-hoo.
• Cheat at whack-a-mole by pressing down repeatedly on the submerged head of one ugly gerbil in its hole for the entire game. It works on older machines, try to get the score up to 999 points so the machine will either freeze up or blow its load of tickets for you.
• Stick wads of gum on every pedal of every driving game. Next, the seats.
• When it's really crowded at the ticket counter, bring up a few hundred prize tickets, and spend an hour picking and choosing carefully from the cheap 1-ticket or 5-ticket prizes, changing your mind often.
• Bring a huge wad of prize tickets to the counter, but don't let the attendant count them. Insist on doing it yourself. Count one by one, really slowly, and lose count often. When (if) you finish, insist on a recount, as you were positive you had more than that.
• Win a wad of prize tickets, stand out in front of the place, and scalp them.
• Wait near a popular, visible driving game. When someone sits in the seat, drape a smock over them, fire up your clippers, and start giving him or her a haircut. For a less risky yet more surreal version, use an accomplice who trusts you with hair clippers. I've always wanted to try this one.
• Play a driving game, and when you crash into something in the game, act like you just crashed in real life. Go flying out of your seat, land screaming on the floor with your leg oddly bent, demand a lawyer, etc.
• Sneak up quietly behind someone playing Mortal Kombat, and when the defining moment of the battle arrives, shout "FINISH HIM!!!!" in your loudest, best Mortal Kombat voice.
• Do the above at a game that's nothing like Mortal Kombat, i.e. pinball.
• Die in some game, then complain to the attendant that the game wasn't fair because everyone was trying to kill you.
• Wait by a fighting game for a really big scary dude to start playing, then quickly insert your coins and challenge him. Be really obnoxious, getting in his face every time your character lands a successful blow. If you win the game, shout "DUDE, I JUST KICKED YOUR SORRY ASS!!!," "YOU SUCK!!!" etc. at the top of your lungs, and do a victory dance, with a little "Go, me.. go, me.." chant for good measure. Then, ask him what he's gonna do about it. If you lose the game, immediately accuse him of cheating, and demand he buy you a free game to compensate.
• Do the same as above, but with a sweet little girl instead of the big scary dude. Furthermore, if during the game she lands a successful blow, immediately seek out her parents and complain that their vicious little daughter just hit you.
• A sharpie marker or a little bit of nail polish remover on a q-tip can make short work of any painted-on game instructions. Try getting rid of certain letters to spell out something naughty.
• If there are stickers on the games saying how many coins to insert, switch them around. The attendant will soon be hearing it from angry cusomers who were "ripped off" because the coolest, most expensive game in the place didn't start up when they put in their one coin.
• Shooting games are fun! Using a small screwdriver or similar, scratch the bejeezus out of the lenses in the guns. Or, just stab through the lens, popping it.
• Most video games have a protective layer of clear plexiglass an inch or so in front of the monitor. Write nasty notes, phone numbers, sexually graphic personal ads, or "http://phonelosers.net" on sheets of paper, and slip them behind the plastic for all to see. Or, use some free horse porn from usenet.
• If you're with a large group of people, see how many of you can physically pile onto one of those coin-operated kiddie cars at once. Then, start the ride. Listen to the cool screeching noises the little motor makes under stress.
• Get all the high scores on a game, and arrange it so all the high score table initials spell out one long demonic message. "1...KIL 2...L_Y 3...OUR 4...FAM 5...ILY"
• Most games have an on-off switch somewhere, and if the attendant isn't smart s/he'll never figure out why the ame isn't working even though it's plugged in. It's usually in the back near where the power cord goes in, sometimes on the top, or underneath the front for pinball.
• Most arcade games use the same three-holed removable power cord your home computer equipment uses. Need a free spare or three?
• Here's the only tip involving an easter-egg... If they have the game "Gauntlet Legends" (the original, it's a big ugly purple and yellow machine) then start a game on player 2,the BLUE side. Enter your initials as "NUD," and the password "069." Choose the blue valkyrie as your character. She will show up naked in the game, with black "censored" rectangles over her naughty bits (and, bizarrely, her eyes.) Now, you can act deeply and morally offended and demand to see the manager about the filthy pornographic game. Or, you can just check out her polygons for the duration of the game.
• (As seen in PLA issue 8) You have a soda with you, don't you? Of course you have. Accidentally pour it into the vents on a game for some cool smoke and sparks. For those curious among you, a normal arcade game can cost anywhere from $500 for an old crappy Tetris or something to $10k or more for the biggest newest hot shit. Even more for a big sit-in game.
• Spill a soda all over the glass on a pinball machine. For something more permanent, get some glass-etching compound from an art supply shop.
• Find a game with a small piece of a ticket sticking out. Light it on fire. With luck, the flame will travel along the strip to the five or ten thousand tickets sitting inside the machine. Fire bad!! FIRE BAD!!!!
• Go into a photo booth. Draw the curtain, and leave some wrinkled porno magazine pages on the seat. For effect, sprinkle the pages and the inside of the booth liberally with a mixture of Jergens hand lotion and water. For even more effect, mix pages from the latest Kids-R-Us clothing catalogue with the porno. The parents will love finding this one!
• A few of the arcades I've worked at over the years have been the type of place where in addition to the games they have food, rides, birthday parties, and such. In this setup, there are a few more ways to have fun...
• Sneak into a random birthday party. Eat some free pizza and birthday cake, and hit on the hostess. Then, hit on the party kid's mom. Then, hit on the party kid's friends' moms. Then, hit on the party kid.
• If they have a stage show with stupid singing robot puppets, remember that all the furry coverings are easily removable in case someone has to repair the animatronics, and furthermore remember that there are precious few things in life more fun than watching a furry mousey or bunny or something sing happy happy songs while half its skin is torn away, revealing its Terminator endoskeleton.
• I don't think I have to tell you what to do if they send out the jackass in the big furry cartoon character costume. Just remember, you'll have to kick extra-hard due to the padding.
• However, if for some strange reason you're not inspired to violence when exposed to a big costumed character (who the hell isn't?) a cool alternative is to suddenly look panic-stricken, and shout into the area of the mask the human can see out of that the head is on fire and for chrissake take it off! Watch the kiddies scream in abject terror as their beloved mascot brutally yanks his own head off. (This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, most of these have cheap electric cooling fans wired inside.)
• If you're the type to mess with credit fraud, and you have an enemy's credit card info, call the party place and se up a birthday party for 30 - 50 guests. Those things can get seriously expensive. And the funny thing is, the charges for a surprising amount of parties were contested by the cardholder in my time at such a place. Are this many people carding parties for their kids? Yeesh, parents these days..
• Get into the ball pit. If they won't let you in, sneak in. Then push the other kids around and make them cry, to get revenge on the world for when you were little and some big bully did that to you in the ball pit and made you cry. Who's king of the ball pit now, huh??? WHO!! WHO RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING BALL PIT NOW!!!! .....I need to go lie down.
• This one is a guaranteed show-stopper if you've got the stomach for it... eat as much ice cream as you can possibly stomach at one time, maybe with some nuts and stuff added. Wait around a while, then take some syrup of ipecac (a first-aid vomit inducer available in pharmacies) immediately before going on a ride. You'll throw quite a respectable gusher, and since all you ate was ice cream it won't be too rough on you. See how many strangers you can hit. This is even more effective if it's a wussy 2 MPH kiddie ride you're on.

Got any more? Mail 'em on up..

RedBoxing in 2000 Written by hal0

United Phone Losers