Posted on: June 22nd, 2010 by Famous Phil

This seems to be a topic that I haven’t been able to find on line that was covered to my satisfaction so I will cover it.  A few weeks ago, I was in the market for speakers for my computer.  I wanted something that was somewhat compact (for easy shipping) yet powerful with decent bass.  I have read reviews for months trying to figure out what would do the job effectively since I knew I would be getting some new speakers.

At first, I got reading many reviews and settled on Bose wasn’t as good as they claim and I took the plunge for a Cambridge SoundWorks i525 tabletop radio.  This radio has reviews saying it is much richer than Bose and just as loud.  I got the radio here at my home and put it up against a Bose first generation Wave Radio that my parents already own.  I will admit that up until about 75dB, it did have a deeper bass and richer tones without any modifications to the sound output from my computer.  After that 75dB mark, it started rumbling trying to keep up with what the Bose was doing.  75dB for me isn’t loud enough since I’m considering using this with a video projector which means its going to have to project sound a little better.  Hence, I decided to send it back.  Now I decided that I’m going with Bose.

My parents already own the first generation Bose Wave Radio and I really like it.  I’ve used it many times for movies outside on my projector because it was small, yet loud, especially bounced off the projection wall / screen.  With hearing the first generation and owning some older speakers on my home theater system, I thought I would go with Bose for good quality sound.  Now my decision came down to 4 possible Bose models.  I considered the Bose Wave Radio first / second generation radios, a companion computer speaker system and a 3-2-1 system.  I’ve heard everyone before except the companion system.  I opted out of the companion system due to it being USB only for a separate subwoofer.  I believe that a separate subwoofer is necessary to reach the bass and amplitude of sound that I want out of a system.  I finally decided against the 3-2-1 system because I didn’t feel like spending another 400 bucks for something I would rarely listen to at full volume (if ever) and the wires that I’d have to deal with for moving it.  I may get it in the future, but right now I don’t think that will happen.

So now it came down to the first / second generation Bose Wave Radio.  I finally decided to take a chance on the 2nd generation.  With Bose, I’ve noticed the 2nd generation doesn’t ever sound as good, but the 2nd generation of the Bose Wave Radio really surprised me.  Like Bose promised, it can produce a deeper bass with keeping the same amplitude of volume compared to the first generation of the Bose Wave Radio.  Both radios are excellent and produce very natural sound, but the 2nd generation does slightly better at it.

I like how the 2nd generation uses headphone jacks instead of RCA jacks for input / output and I do like the bigger display, but I hate how they removed the buttons on the radio and force use of the remote (which is easily losable).  With these changes, I’ve opted to stick with the Bose Wave Radio II for the foreseeable future.

With all this said, I wouldn’t go back on saying that I really like the Bose Wave Radios, both generations.  Depending on your needs, I would recommend either generation if you want to take the plunge into the world of Bose.

Tags: bose, bose wave radio, cambridge soundworks, radio
Posted in Technology
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Posted on: June 14th, 2010 by Famous Phil

When I build servers, I build them to run smoothly and last a long time.  I always keep security at the top of my priority list when configuring new servers (and even personal computers).  Today, my security practices were tested, and overall, were very successful!  As a few of my readers might know, Podnet, the IRC network that I run was exploited because of the IRC daemon (software) that it runs.  This required emergency maintenance that caused an hour outage today unexpectedly.

Before I go into my security and how I discovered the vulnerability I want to take a moment to defend open source software.  On June 12, Unrealircd’s developers discovered that the latest version of their software was hacked in November of 2009 on all the official mirrors and their main website.  This hacked copy was distributed for well over 7 months before someone finally caught on when their server was hacked.  When the first server was exploited, the developers figured out how very quickly and discovered that the official installation archive was the culprit.  Because of this, they learned that providing md5 checksums is very important in ensuring the original installation archive is used in installing software.  I have also learned how to check these archives and I will likely always check them from now on after being a victim myself.

Although this vulnerability was solved within hours of its discovery, there are many people out there that will defend proprietary software like Microsoft Windows which is full of vulnerabilities.  The truth of the matter is, Microsoft would have responded just the same was as Unrealircd’s developers did.  The fact that Unrealircd is open source truly allows anyone to see the source and see what vulnerabilities are in a program (and hence fix them).  Its sad that no one who downloads open source software from Unreal discovered this (me included) but that is the way it is.  I still support both Open Source and Proprietary software for their own unique reasons.

So now onto my security.  All of my systems run most programs as underprivileged users that cannot do any wide system damage.  I also run software that detects changes in any kind of file on my servers.  It is a combination of these 2 methods of prevention that prevented podnet from being down much longer than it was (due to the need for a complete server restore to last week).  Thankfully, the script that was exploited couldn’t do anything but run and immediately get killed sending me a notification that something was started remotely.  Within 10 minutes of the exploit, I began figuring out how to fix the problem.  I was originally going to wait until around now to fix it (when no one is on the network) but then within an hour another attempt happened.  Obviously I didn’t want to risk letting my security fail.

If nothing else, I hope that you got that you should NEVER EVER EVER run your own system as an administrator if you care about the integrity of your computer or system.  Thankfully, running as another user, I ended up replacing a single directory as a precaution on the server instead of doing an entire system restore that would have taken much longer.  I continue to always run as the user phil for my own systems which has no privileges except for what I need.   I also disable / rename the main administrator account since most hack attempts come to those accounts (since they’re default).  Hopefully you do the same

Tags: exploit, unrealircd, vulnerability
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration
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Posted on: June 5th, 2010 by Famous Phil

This is more a notice than a real post.  As I prepare my own site for the migration in exactly one week to PHP 5.3.2, I noticed that there is a lot of extra stuff in my website directory that is no longer active.  Among the files is my screen cap demo using the High School Musical 3 screen caps that I made.  Since the demo site will not be compatible with PHP 5.3.2, I have decided to remove the gallery.  You may obtain the caps archive at http://famousphil.com/archive/hsm3.zip until July 1, 2010.

Posted in My Site
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