June 2012

There were 46 posts published in June 2012 (this is page 3 of 5).

Burglars busted!

Friday evening, I learned from my neighbor that two suspects who allegedly broke into my neighbor’s house have been arrested. I knew it wouldn’t take long, since the hapless burglars had fled on foot and left their getaway car in the driveway. Rumor has it that at least one of the kids was arrested when he was caught when he was breaking into another home.

Friday afternoon, I took note of a strange car making a loop down Weatherford Drive. There was a young kid in the middle of the back seat and it looked as if he were being chauffeured around. I remember from our own break-in a few years ago that police detectives will drive burglary suspects around to the homes the suspect might have burglarized, giving the suspect the opportunity to own up to each break-in. I don’t know if this is what was taking place with this kid but it made me wonder.

I haven’t heard back from my police contacts about the details of the arrests. If I get those details I’ll post them here.

Update 1:15 PM: Info on burglary suspects is here, courtesy of the Raleigh Police Department.

HD radio online

Yesterday I got curious about HD Radio so I pulled up the Wikipedia page on it. It turns out HD Radio a proprietary mess. Standard-owner iBiquity could’ve used one of the dozens of openly-available CODECs to create HD Radio (and the FCC could’ve mandated it) but instead it hacked the MPEG4-AAC standard into something proprietary. In the long run, this will set back American radio innovation as compared to Europe’s open standards-based approach. What a shame.

The end result is that radio manufacturers have to pay a royalty to make HD radio receivers. Station owners pay a large fee for the encoder and sign away 3% of their net profits. All of this is for a digital format with a nascent, unproven audience.

Looking to Raleigh’s leader in broadcast advancements, Capitol Broadcasting, I clicked on WRAL-FM’s homepage and found a link to listen online to the station’s HD broadcast. An Adobe Flash-based player instantly launched, streaming a nice mix of music with apparently no commercials. Quite nice!
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Beach dreaming


We spent some time shopping for beach houses to rent this summer. Kelly’s partial to the Outer Banks but I felt drawn to the beach I knew best as a kid, Garden City, SC. I grew up a lot during those week-long summer stays at my aunt and uncle’s beachhouse. It was one of those homes (much like my grandmother’s) that I came to know quite well year after year, in contrast to the many homes we moved into and out of when I was a kid.

In spite of monster hurricanes it still stands, though it belongs to someone else now. The memories will remain, and one upcoming summer we’ll rent one of the homes just down the block from the one I used to know.

Perdue “false letters” controversy

Today’s News and Observer brought word in big type that Governor Perdue’s staff drafted two “false letters” that misrepresented the views of the NCDOT’s chief operating officer Jim Trogdon regarding two road projects. I read and reread the article, confused about where the controversy was that prompted the bombastic headline, “Perdue Staff Altered Letters.”

From what I can gather, Trogdon was out of town, the governor’s office asked Trogdon’s office for help in responding to concerns of two legislators, Trogdon’s staff worked with Perdue’s staff to craft the letters, and the letters were sent to the legislators in time for the budget meeting.

Trogden’s assistant takes full responsibility for the changes, since she approved them. To me, this is simply a breakdown in communication, not the conspiracy the N&O makes it out to be.

Betsy Muse has a bigger breakdown on the issue here.

The First Amendment is not just for artists

So this young NPR intern named Emily White wrote a breathtakingly clueless defense of her choice to steal music rather than to pay for it, her ridiculous argument boiling down to it being more “convenient” to steal than to purchase. She apparently doesn’t see how her actions hurt the very artists she claims to admire.

Over at the Trichordist blog, musician David Lowery wrote a rebuttal to White. Lowery is the force behind the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. I’m a big fan. I own a number of Cracker CDs and even got Lowery’s autograph after Cracker swung by Raleigh for a show a few years ago. Some of my money wound up in Lowery’s pocket and I’m happy with that. He earned it.
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The Art of Deception

The recent LinkedIn password crisis got me looking for good book on hacking. Sadly, Kevin Mitnick’s book The Art of Deception is not that book. On the foreward page of the book, one reader scrawled a message that said:

WARNING! THIS BOOK COULD HAVE BEEN A MAGAZINE ARTICLE, FOR ALL ITS SUBSTANCE!

I got through about ten pages before I concluded that the previous reader was right. Mitnick’s a terrible writer, with many of his sentences tend to ramble and lack focus. It reads as if he was told by his editor to fill x pages and so he put little thought into what he is trying to say.

What’s more, much of what he says doesn’t rise beyond simple common sense. It’s not entirely Mitnick’s fault, as network security became far more sophisticated while he was serving time for his crimes. While he might have been a big fish when he was arrested in Raleigh in the early 90s, his hacking methods don’t compare to those used today. For instance, Mitnick recommends against writing down passwords, even though most security experts now agree that this policy encourages people to use simple, easy-to-remember passwords that can be easily cracked. Even if Mitnick was up on the latest techniques, though, it’s likely he can’t reveal these techniques due to terms of his parole.

What we’re left with is a book that is actually pretty boring. I’m a guy who enjoys learning about network security but even I can’t bear to finish this book.

Computer Security Session 1: Passwords, Overview

In light of LinkedIn’s password disaster, I found this advice on choosing passwords to be very helpful:

Passwords are like housekeys for computer services. They are intended to be secrets that allow you to access resources, but deny access to others.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about passwords:

What are the passwords protecting?

If one password is breached how many other computer services become vulnerable?

Who else knows your passwords? How much do you trust them?

What services have your passwords? How much do you trust them?

How many passwords do you have to manage?

How do you manage your computer passwords?

via Computer Security Session 1: Passwords, Overview « KW FreeSkool.

Ubuntu Unity desktop


I have tried using the Ubuntu Unity desktop and can say that in spite of a few week’s use, it has not grown on me one iota. In fact, it drives me nuts not being able to find a running application, or to start a new instance of a running application, or not to have things tucked into nicely hidden menus.

Ubuntu Unity is a horrible mess of a user interface, a colossal misstep by Canonical which sets Ubuntu back by years. The day that a sensible desktop is no longer available for Ubuntu and all that’s left is Unity is the day I’m leaving Ubuntu for good.

Update: This handy script will help downgrade Gnome3 to Gnome 2, which is what I need to do after flubbing the removal of Unity.

Fake “morgue shooting” headline

"17 remain dead in morgue shooting spree"


A blurry image shared by the George Takei Facebook page showed an edition of the News and Observer that had a story headlined “17 remain dead in morgue shooting spree.” It looked fishy, so I went hunting for the source.

Turns out, Andy Bechtel already did the legwork:

So where did the fake N&O page come from? A Facebook friend points to the Brunching Shuttlecocks, a defunct comedy website, as the source of this image. If you happen to know more, please add a comment on this post.

Good job, Andy!

(For those who are curious, here’s the real front page appeared on September 7, 2001. [PDF] )