Well, with so many people all getting butthurt over stupid (and irrelevant) IRC activity, combined with the comments of how the forums have "gone downhill" we have taken some steps to improve the situation.

I still firmly believe that it is YOU, the binrev community, who need to police yourselves better and stand up when people are bringing down YOUR forums. However, since no one seems to want to do that, you have left it to me to fix...again. So I am going to fix it the only way that I know how. I am about to implement MARTIAL LAW! Many of you will not like it. That is too bad since you had the opportunity to fix the problems yourselves before it got to this point, so now you must deal with my way of handling things.

The first step was actually done last weekend. We added 3 new moderators to our moderating team. I would like to publicly announce and welcome mirrorshades, Alk3, and deepgeek to the moderating team. They have all been trained on the forum rules and our policies and will all make excellent additions to our existing moderating team. This is only the beginning as we are considering a few more people who may also be joining as well. This is not something that we take lightly. This is a serious job and it takes a lot to earn your spot on this team. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all of them and I appreciate the drama that they have to put up with on a daily basis even if many of our member do not. If you earn your way onto this team, then you are head and shoulders worthy of my respect.

With a strong moderating team in place, we will now begin to clean up the forums. There will be NO MORE slaps on the wrist for offenses. We are now under a no-tolerance policy. This includes not only the letter of the laws, but also the general civility level of the forums. There will be NO MORE FLAMING ANYWHERE IN THE FORUMS! Let me say it again to make it crystal clear. THERE WILL BE NO MORE FLAMING IN THE FORUMS! and there are NO EXCEPTIONS to this rule. You will get warned or banned for violating this mandate.

This MARTIAL LAW status will endure until the forums are cleaned up. It may take a month, it may take longer,. If you want it to go back to normal, I suggest that you PARTICIPATE by policing each other. How? Send PM to people who post something that is bad, illegible, off-topic, or just plain wrong. REPORT posts to the moderating team so that we can address them faster. Defend people who get flamed instead of letting bystander apathy take over your life and this community. Do not stand by and watch people ruin the forums. CALL THEM OUT!

Please everyone: Help us make these forums a better place by participating. If you stop trying, then we will stop trying and we will shut the whole thing down. I really do not need this headache, stress, and aggravation. It is your site, not mine. If it has to go down, then it is on you, not me. Please do not let that happen.

To quote someone from the off-topic section, "The Revolution will be Monetized!"

WHAT IT IS:

Many of our long-time users here know that we have been through a long road of increasing server costs that have come out of my pocket personally. I have not bothered anyone about money because I want to share as much information for free as we could to help our community grow. I always tried to find alternative ways to pay for our family of sites. Increased server costs and software licenses have made that difficult financially, but I think I have found a solution that if fair to everyone *and* will hopefully help ease my personal financial burden.

I never set up a donations link because I wanted to give people something back in appreciation for their support and I think that I have found a way to do that. What I have done is create a new member group called "Agents of the Revolution" that is a subscription based group. What this means is that you can only join this group by donating $25.00 towards binrev and all of our services each year as part of this subscription. It is important to immediately point out after that statement that THIS IS TOTALLY OPTIONAL! It will not impact any current members in any way whatsoever! All of the forums that we have currently are not going to change and are still under the same settings that they always have been. This new group is strictly on a voluntary basis.

So why would you want to join this group? Besides just the show of support, we tried to give you a lot of extra bonuses and capacity on the server. They are as follows..

WHAT YOU GET:

• More PM space (500!)
• Unlimited gallery space!
• Free blog space right here on binrev.com
• Access to 1 special private agents-only forum
• Advance previews of content (like articles, radio shows, videos, etc...)
• Exclusive and Advanced offers before public availability (discounts with affiliate sites, pre-purchase of binrev merchandise, etc...)
• More forum features to numerous to mention (no flood control on searches, ability to view offline board, change your forum name, etc...)
• Our appreciation for your support!

IMPORTANT NOTES and FAQ:

• Forum rules still apply! You MUST FOLLOW THE FORUMS RULES or you can still be warned and/or banned and your money WILL NOT be refunded!
• You can choose not to renew at any time if you are no longer interested.
• There is another separate group called "Senior Agents" who have access to this private forum as well. Membership to the senior agents group is by invite only for members who participate in project and content for the hacking community. YOU CANNOT BUY MEMBERSHIP TO THIS GROUP!

DIRECTIONS:

How do you subscribe to this group?

If you have decided that you like what you see and want to subscribe to this new group, you can do so by going into your "MY CONTROLS" section using the link located in the upper right hand corner of the forums. On the left hand side menu system you will see a section labeled "OPTIONS". Here you should click on "Purchase Paid Subscriptions" and you will see that there is only 1 subscription available. Select it and click the continue button which will take you to the PAYPAL payment gateway. At this time, we are only able to offer paypal as our payment gateway. New users will be presented with this option when they join the forums.

The payment and activation should be immediate assuming your paypal account works properly. If it does not, you can PM me with your information and I will look into it. When you come back to the forums, you should notice yourself in the member list for the new group.

CLOSING:

I know that some of you will not agree with this and think that everything should be free, but please understand that it is getting more and more difficult to sustain these ongoing costs which I have covered personally for the past 5+ years. I have come out of my own pocket for literally tens of thousands of dollars during this time. I have resisted advertising on binrev.com and want to continue to do so. I thought that this was a fair compromise that still provides the same service but offers you something in return for your donation. Between this and the ads that we have put on our smaller sites (most of you probably didn't even notice these either) we hope that we will be able to cover our monthly costs long into the future.

Thank you for your support, whether financial or participation in the forums. I understand that not everyone can afford to do this, but we appreciate everyone none-the-less. I look forward to a long life for the Revolution!

-StankDawg

All shirt orders placed from Oct 28, 2007 to Nov 15, 2007 are on their way to the post office as we speak. US should be getting your orders within a few days and one is going to the Czech Republic may take just a little longer.

We are running very low on most sizes except for XL, so this is your last chance to buy other sizes. I will remove the other sizes from the orders page sometime next month. Make sure that you place your orders soon before we run out of your size!

Episode #200 of BRR is now available in the archive and on the podcast.

About the episode:

• "This is your life episode" with Directors commentary on every episode from the first 4 seasons.
• Seasons 1-2 starring ntheory (3+ hours).
• Seasons 3-4 Starring BlackRatchet (2+ hours).
• "Where are they now" segment featuring dual_parallel (~1 hour).
• My closing comments and some shouts/thanks (~30 minutes).

The file is over 7 hours in length and weighs in at over 75 MB!

Tonight, on 11/06/2007, episode #200 of BRR will stream on DDP hackradio. I am not sure how quickly I can put this on the podcast, so if you want to be the first to hear the big news and announcements, you will want to listen to this on the pseudo-live stream since someone will inevitably ruin it for everyone else by posting about it in the forums. There is some big news on this season4 finale!

Total runtime is just over 7 hours!!!!!! Talk about your all-encompassing episode of BRR! Remember to hear it on the DDP HackRadio stream first!

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are having some minor issues with the server. We have identified the problem and and looking into it. During this time, apache may spontaneously die and restart. We are not under attack nor is this a critical issue. It looks like a minor misconfiguration that we have to isolate.

I have implemented a solution, but bear with us to see if it works.