The risks of WiFi

And almost certainly illegal, and very certainly immoral...

I follow this blog... http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/  It's pretty good. Talks about all kinds of nerdy stuff, including ham radio and computers and technology and pretty much everything I find interesting.   You should all go read through some of the archives, they really are a good read.   But the most recent post is the one I will refer to in this post.   It was about the dangers of unencrypted networks.   I have long known the powers of Airsnort, Aircrack, and other tools used for monitoring wireless networks.   I knew you could listen to, and record anything that is ever sent over a wireless network.   I thought it was cool...   But it was complicated, and I didn't really care...

But that blog post referred to a Firefox extension called Firesheep, http://codebutler.com/firesheep, which will happily record packets, focusing primarily on usernames and passwords to websites that it cares about.  And when you click on a person's username?  It logs you in as them.  Super easy, super creepy.   Now, like I said, this is almost certainly illegal, and I don't suggest anyone use it...   I do suggest, however, that you all go into your Facebook settings and turn on HTTPS.  And I suggest you get smart about where you log into stuff.   And if your on an unencrypted network, be careful about what data you enter.   Cuz this is just stupidly easy to use.  

As a last thought, TMCC and UNR both encrypt their wireless networks now.  Therfore, it is safe to use your computer and browse to your hearts content in those locations.   Still, a bit of vigilance can go a long, LONG ways....

BPMDJ on Fedora 14 x86_64

It's not typically my style to do how-to's.   It's my general impression that by the time I do something, it has been done by dozens before me.  However, it appears that in this time, that's not the case.

OK, first a little background:

I have a music library of a decent size:  Just shy of 83 hundred tracks of CD quality FLACs.  I have spent quite a bit of time standardizing the storage schema, so that all the folders are sorted uniformily and all the files are named appropriately.  I then used MusicBrainz Picard to tag the albums, and EasyTag to tag the miscellaneous collections.  After all of that, I can say with some comfort that my collection is at least uniform and that it's tags are correct.

The next big thing for me is to be able to create playlists that are good for working out.  I have been reading about how matching your music's beats to your workout will help you workout longer and more efficiently, and I have installed a couple apps on my phone that will match music to your jogging pace automatically, IF your music is already tagged for such magic.

And so this brings me to my problem:  Tagging upwards of 8 thousand songs BPMs by hand isn't a task for the feint of heart, or for those who have jobs.   As such, I have spent several months questing for the very best BPM counter for linux.  I have tried various products, such as a plugin for Amarok, a hidden feature of Banshee, etc. but none of them ever worked for me.  In all my research, people kept pointing towards a product called BPMDJ (http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org), but it's not available in binary form.

This leads to the extended problem:  I spent MONTHS not able to compile the stupid thing.  Well, today, hours of fiddling and a very decently worded bug report later, I was successful, and this is the process:

1. I installed all the dependencies months ago, and so this list may be incomplete... If anyone finds a problem, please let me know and I will update this post.  Basically, the following command (as root) should get the job done:

yum install qt-devel alsa-lib-devel fftw fftw-devel mpg123 lame vorbis-tools mplayer

2. I downloaded the source from http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org/
3. Per the instructions on their home page, and because Fedora is always just a little bleeding edge with their packages, I had to patch symbol.h to be compatable with the QT packages included:

Change:

Symbol() : text(NULL)

{

}; 

To:

Symbol() : text((const char*)NULL) 

{

};

4. Because of a bug in the BPMClock driver (http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1298), you also have to patch  bpmclock.cpp to include the following include line:

#include

5. You can now move on with the steps as intended.  Create a defines file, mine looks like this:

CPP             = g++ -g -O3 -Wall

RCC             = rcc

UIC             = uic-qt4

MOC             = moc-qt4

CFLAGS         += -D COMPILE_ALSA

LDFLAGS        += -lpthread -lm -lasound -lrt -lfftw3

QT_INCLUDE_PATH = -I/usr/include/QtGui/ -I/usr/include/QtCore/ -I/usr/include/Qt/

QT_LIBRARY_PATH = /usr/lib64/libQtCore.so.4

QT_LIBS         = -lQtGui

BITS            = 64

6. Run the make command, and everything should play nice.  I then moved bpmdj, bpmplay and bpmdjraw to/usr/bin, and added it to my Application Launcher, and it seems to be working... Now on to the original goal and question: Will this read and tag all my files?  Only time will tell.

These instructions successfully build the program and get it installed.  In my next post, I will explain how to setup and use the program.

The FCC doesn't require search warents?

OK, I'm going to take a strongly political slant today, instead of my normal technological one.   Good luck!

As many of you know, I am an Amateur Radio Operator, and as such, I get a lot of information about goings on amongst the various radio services.   Today, in a newsletter from the Amateur Radio Relay Legue, there was an article about an individual in California who is causing major interference with a local fire station's radio equipment with their CB radio.   It is the job of the FCC to force compliance among all the radio licenses, settle disputes, etc, and so it is clearly in their realm to do an investigation.  In this case, agents from the FCC made several visits to this CB operator's house, requesting to inspect the equipment for compliance, and the operator denied them access without a search warrant.  In response, the FCC has submitted an order that revokes the person's license to operate, instituted a fine, and deemed the operator as being out of compliance with rules for not allowing the inspection of his equipment without a warrant.

OK, here's where my feelings fall on the subject.  The FCC was doing their job by responding to the Fire Department's request, their investigation was thorough and well done, and they hadn't stepped on anyone's rights by requesting to inspect the equipment.   Additionally, I feel the operator in question was correct in refusing them without a warrant, on the following grounds:  Yes, the license for any radio license gives the FCC the privilege of inspecting your equipment for compliance, and an operator should honor their request.   However, that does not make the FCC more important than the constitution...   If this operator didn't want the FCC on his property, their only course of action is to revoke his license and possibly assess a fine for the interference alone... The equipment inspection should be used only to PROTECT the operator, not as a means of intimidation.

 Now, don't get me wrong, I think this operator is in violation of his licence, should have it revoked, and should be fined.   I think $7000 is excessive and unconstitutional, and I think the FCC should not be making any wars over the Search Warrant issue.   I don't think they have overstepped their authority in this case, but I think the agents chose poor wording and have opened themselves to a lawsuit.  In fact, if such a lawsuit gets filed, I will side with the operator on the subject, as the agents stating they don't need a warrant indicates a blatant disrespect of the constitution from the FCC, and from the Executive Branch as a whole.   They need to be put in check.  As a means of clarification, here's the 4th amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 

 Certainly, the person can have their license to operate revoked.  But their property can not be inspected or seized without a warrant from the judge.

Cell Phone data plans

T-Mobile recently ran a commercial that states that they offer data plans starting at $10 a month... Well, I went and found out what that means:  $10 for 200MB a month.   I then installed an app on my phone called "Stats Free" to calcuate my data usage, cleared it's logs, deleted all my local email cache and then I synced my 3 email accounts back on, and updated a few apps that were out of date...  I blew through 17.8MB in 10 minutes.   Sure, abnormal behavior.   However, I am a pretty heavy data user, and I wanted to get a number that represented what I might actually use in a month, without having to wait that long...   Assuming I can keep myself under that much in an entire day (I mean, I DO have WiFi at work and at home... How hard can it be?), I would still require a 500-600MB per month data plan.

So much for T-Mobile's "Cheap" plans...

I have been researching handheld GPS devices recently, mostly out of personal curiosity about what's available, but partly out of interest of getting a device I can load my own maps onto and take backpacking.   Not wanting to settle for anything less than the best, I am torn between the Garmin GPSMAP 62 and the GPSMAP78.   They are largely the same GPS, but the 78 comes preloaded with nautical maps, and the 62 covers Topo 100K maps...  Either way, I would be replacing the onboard stuff with Topo 24K maps, so the preloaded stuff is not a determining factor... In the end, I will just have to hold them and see which one feels better in my hands.

That being said, the maps I can buy from Garmin are only of a certain amount of utility... They are nice, but they only give me what Garmin wants me to have, and that simply won't do.  As a student of Geographic Information Systems, I need the ability to load GIS data onto my device, and to get data back off again.   I am largely annoyed by the lack of consumer grade devices that have this ability.

In an attempt to get what I need without dropping nearly $3 grand on one of these bad boys: Trimble Nomad 900GXE, I discovered this cool software called OziExplorer.   I'm pretty stoked about the idea...  It converts tracks and points to Shapefiles (.shp) and back again.   It's neat stuff.

There's also the constant nagging from the back of my mind that I should try to get GrassGIS running on one of my linux machines... Maybe I can get someone to buy me the hardware in exchange for my research and my skills....

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=63802
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=63603
http://www.google.com/search?q=Trimble%C2%AE+Nomad%C2%AE+900G&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=Trimble%C2%AE+Nomad%C2%AE+900G&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=1vY&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbs=shop:1&ei=RUwiTfmXOIbSsAO9jsGRCg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CBkQ_AU&biw=1920&bih=866&fp=9bef8cda26d1a6ec
http://gpstracklog.com/2006/01/using_gis_data__1.html