I dunno' 'bout that, as I keep mine up to date, always have - always will.
But speaking of taking minutes to find a "fix".
fftopic:
on the way, you have been duly warned.
Back in the wild west days of hacking D*Tv cards I had a buddy some 15 years older than me that was really into that 'hobby'.
He had a card programmer and would spend waaaaaay more time daily on different hacking forums than we spend here on AGO. He had several receivers, but one would be running different 'versions' of bin files, more or less testing different bin files that'd allow him to receive different channels, all channels, etc.
Heck, some guys even ran a ribbon cable directly into the front of their receivers (attached to a card interface) that was connected to a PC sitting in the floor where they could be 'live' instantly loading the latest "bin" files all in the name of science er... a hobby that is. One that'd allow you to get totally uninterrupted digital signals beamed in directly from space. :laughing:
The thing is, D*Tv tech also frequented the very same forums and downloaded the very same files. So once you had a working file to program your card they'd build an update that'd download via your dish and in anywhere from 15 minutes to 15 days you'd start losing channels. Sometimes every other one, other times groups say from 200 to 250, other times only channels that were on the same transponder/same satellite.
Well it wasn't really something that allowed the guys to get any real free programming as they constantly paid for this or that to do what they were doing. Not to mention all the TIME they spent keeping up with the game. As I said..... more of a hobby. A game as it was, possibly to both them and D*Tv.
Remember now this wasn't in the days of high speed internet. Everything back then was dial-up, and you generally paid for the hours you had online at a given speed (or by the minute if you wanted something faster). Speaking of by the minute, in the early days when I was an Admin on CompuServe and Prodigy we had off-line readers to keep up with our forums (they were called BBS's or communities at the time). So if you wanted to connect at 2400 baud that's what you got, but if you really wanted to scream, you could pay $3.45 PER MINUTE to connect at 9600 baud which meant you'd tell your off-line reader to go in, hit your 'forums' grab your stuff and be off-line in a minute or so.
So anyhow.... I digress.... like lil' ol' me has EVER done something like that!Im the MAN
What finally ended the days of card hacking was what my buddy said was called "Black Sunday". It was Super Bowl Sunday in fact.
For months D*Tv would send down a 4 byte bit of code that may or may not do anything to your card, depending on what 'bin' file you had loaded (from any number of hacker sites). The hackers had no idea why they were sending the "updates" as they were, especially as on the surface most card/bins had no obvious effect. None-the-less, some bins were affected so they'd (very quickly, within 15 minutes sometimes) upload a new 'bin' to the download section.
So this went on for months with sporadic affect, sometimes losing a few channels at worst and everyone goes on about their business.
Super Bowl Sunday, during the pregame show almost at kickoff time, sure enough in the data stream down comes yet another 4 byte "update". Quickly the forums updated and almost as quickly, (perhaps thinking they may be about to lose the ability to watch the big game with all their buddies) these guys would run to grab one of their spare cards, throw a new 'bin' file on it and stuff it in their receiver. The thing is, most cards by that time had to be married to a receiver so you either had to clone a card (so you'd have two for a single receiver) or pull the card out and quickly reprogram it.
Most only had one card btw as you had to buy another receiver to get a new, "virgin" card. Although on eBay you could openly buy cards.
What they didn't realize was that all this time, the 4 bytes were building up an .exe file on the card. Once the file was complete it ran, and the cards (well most of them) physically shorted out and became junk!
Now this is where the FIFTEEN MINUTE thing comes in.
Almost immediately there were detailed instructions, posted on hacker forums all over Europe (where most of this stuff was from) as well as the US and Canada (
Canada was where the largest single hacker guy on the planet lived with some 12,000 cards but that's another story) instructions that included detailed instructions, macro photography, and just how to take an X-acto knife to your processor on your card(s) to get around this so-called evil download from D*Tv and finally, once and for all,
fix your card to where you didn't have to worry about them messing with your card and you'd be able to receive all the channels FREE.... FOREVER! :laughing:
Guess what? If you didn't already have a card that was internally shorted out, at that point you were taking a freaking blade to the risc processor and destroying it, FOREVER! Talk about ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!
They couldn't call customer service and say their cards were not working as they were hacked. .)
Couldn't call saying they tried to 'fix' the hack by taking an X-acto to them either. That my friends is what pretty much put an end to hacking D*Tv from that point on.
Not to mention it really pi$ off a lot of Super Bowl party folks. Now that's funny, I don't care who you are. (
In the words of Larry the Cable Guy.) :laughing:
(The only way around it was if you were smart enough to keep the virgin card that came with your receiver and only THEN you put it back into your machine and went on paying your bill a you should have been doing all along.)
FWIW... my buddy had always paid his bill and just played around with it on his bedroom machine as of all things....... a "hobby"! After that he burned everything, pulled down his shades, and twitched every time the door bell rang thinking the D*Tv police were at his door for months. :nomore:
While she finished getting ready I went ahead and cleaned the engine bay. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow...
Considering how OCD I am about cleaning wheels, what with a whole bucket of Daytona brushes, Wheel Woolie 3-pack, tire brushes, wheel well brushes (some 12 in total). Couple that with APC+, APC, both acid and non-acid wheel cleaner, possibly IronX, TarX, SonaX 
:nomore:
