Neil Hopcroft

…is this thing on?

I’ve got DSL service again! Watch out world, I’ll be answering that backlog of emails any week now…

Why does Stash the Cache (advertised as an ‘uncensored geocaching magazine’, why would you make an uncensored geocaching magazine?) point to a religious discussion forum?

Any Cambridge people around late this Saturday afternoon able to give me a hand unloading a van?

Linkblast:

“It was rather disconcerting when the rubbish bin started humming furiously.”
“In Cleveland, Ohio women are not allowed to wear patent-leather shoes.”
Taming The Bicycle, three fat men, and other oddities

So just what the hell is this whole Hayseed Dixie thing all about, you ask?

Skimming the Argos catalogue earlier I noticed this Silver Leaf 2 Piece Toilet Seat. Outstanding, for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve just found a file called ‘cvs_sploit.c’ in my filesystem, dating from Feb last year….

“Any access to the pserver will work, anonymous is enough.
The exploit tries to bind to port 30464 on the target and exec a shell on connection,
It will connect there itself and pass control to you if it succeeds. Accidentally, this means that
if that port is firewalled, the exploit will fail.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Compile the proggie: gcc -o sploit this_file.c
2. Make sure the target is running Linux, use nmap -O, it won’t work unless it’s a Linux
3. Run the proggie: ./sploit -r repository -u user [ -p password if not empty ] target_host
4. Look for output, if the exploit doesn’t work:
a. If after readjusting in memory ( you will be told when it happens ) the figures that you see
(return codes) are 3’s, and nothing else, tweak the -j parameter, the default is 7, but
I had to use 0 on a debian cvs 1.11.1, it worked in the end, you might even try low negative integers
b. If after readjusting you see not only 3’s but 0’s, occasionally -2’s and others,
but 0’s are of interest, then chances are the -j is correct, then set the -s to 4,
setting it to 4 means it will bruteforce for longer, but will try every address
5. If successful, clean up the mess after yourself: rm -rf /tmp/cvs*
6. Enjoy it even if you don’t break in anywhere :)”

…wonder how that got there…bet it doesn’t still work…

Caffeine contents

Product Caffeine (mg)*
Coffee, grande (16 oz.) Starbucks 550
Caffe Americano, short (8 oz.) Starbucks 35
Coffee, tall (12 oz.) Starbucks 375
Caffe Latte, short (8 oz.) or tall (12 oz.) Starbucks 35
…

A large collection of articles about embedded systems

This is the list for ‘D’, theres another 25 letters:

“Data Compression – Transmission bandwidth is always limited (hey… if you’re reading this over a 28.8kb link, you get the picture!). Data compression can help a lot.
Dear Abbey – Abbey talks to developers about building embedded systems.
Debuggable designs – Tips for improving hardware designs
Debugging ISRs – Part 1 – This is part 1 of a two part series on debugging interrupt service routines.
Debugging ISRs – Part 2 – This is part 2 of a two part series on debugging interrupt service routines.
Deconstructing XP – eXtreme Programming has some fabulous ideas. And some really dumb ones. This is a review of two XP books.
Depot Repair – Thoughts on our throwaway economy, and our role in it.
Design For Performance – Make the system as fast as it needs to be!
Digital Engineering is More Fun – Core memory was all we had years ago. It’s interesting stuff.
Disaster – A description of some embedded disasters, and what we can learn from them.
DMA – Too many of us don’t really understand DMA. Read on…
Do You Need An Agree – Is a degree needed? Useful?
Drawing Systems – Most small companies never organize their drawings in a logical fashion, and instead all-too-often rely on memory when building production units. Here’s an easy system that will get your drawings in order.
DSP – An introduction to Digital Signal Processing.”

House! I’ve got keys, and they work and everything, so I’m now officially indentured again. Or something of that nature, the contracts are so onerous these days its a wonder anyone actually manages to rent out houses at all. This one, for instance (in clause bb or so), prohibits me from immoral behaviour during my tenure. I asked for a definition of immoral but thought it best not to press the point, since I’m perfectly aware that, while my morals are probably more moral than those of many of my acquaintances, there are those who question the morality of working for a mobile phone company. I figured that a court of law would probably have trouble defining immoral much better than I could, so I’m gonna risk it and hope it doesn’t come to that.

Directions will be available by email once I’ve figured out how to get here. There’ll be a housewarming, and some gaming days, and the usual frivolity, probably also a ‘bring a mower’ party in the spring when the grass gets to knee-high.

“Hmmm, waxy. I wonder what that smell is…” I said to myself just before stopping the car to take a look in the boot. There had been the sound of something clonking around, like a cannister or bottle rattling from one side to the other for a while, but that had stopped recently. I found two pools of green wax in the centre of the carpet. Nice. Just hope it dries to a hooverable powder.