So what are the risks for other su root programs? As a user, can I just set these env vars and run the programs and get root? Should su root programs be statically linked?
Hmm, actually, thinking about it, I'd probably better just research this.
A child is not a slave you can force to start your car for you every morning. If it's so cold that YOU - an ADULT -
do not want to go out to start your car, why would you send a CHILD out to do it?
I have a couple of small programs that I wrote to do this to a LP I sampled a while back (it was unavailable on CD at the time). They are not very good but they worked and are available from http://www.perihelion.demon.co.uk/oss
One attempts to find quiet points in the music (the algorithm is close but not quite right) the other allows you to save chunks out of a long wav file to shorter wav files.
It's been a while since I wrote them but I think they come with source. Err, actually looking at them, that's all there is. Happy compiling:)
These things are supposed to be able to play VCDs, CDs and MP3 CDs. I bought two DAV 310s, one for me, one for my brother. It just about plays CDs but tends to skip at the slightest touch, I have not been able to create a VCD that plays on it without jumping and jerking (and from my research, neither has anybody else) and it's pretty hopeless at MP3 as well, I had to try five or six different encoders before I found one that didn't produce horrendous artifacts (these artifacts didn't show up under other players either). Add to that that it crashes, powers down sometimes when you hit stop and sometimes just plain refuses to do anything, takes ages to read in the list of songs and has a very long gap between songs.
I have to say that this device was probably the worst value for money purchase I have *ever* made. I just can't say how much they suck.
I bought a couple of Cybikos a year ago. I felt that they were actually pretty good value for the money but I could see where there were some shortfalls and I predicted that it wouldn't be long before they released a new version with some of the better features. Cybiko denied they had anything planned and a lot of people said it wouldn't happen but *smug*.
Seriously though, these are cool devices. The SDK is open and free although documentation was a little lacking last time I checked. There is a whole host of games and apps for them (as with the palm) and a thriving developer community. Also, one of the coolest things is that if you have two of these things, you can use one as a tunnel, connect to your PC and have wireless internet on the other one.
I was planning on writing some apps for mine but unfortunately, events overtook me this year. Now they have this new one out, I shall have to have another look (I hope the Xtreme has a serial port like the classic)
C:>touch abc def
Can't touch abc - No such file or directory
Can't touch def - No such file or directory
Moral: In Windows, never expect the same thing to work the same way twice. Not that Unix is any better in those regards of course.
It's true that there are some apps that consider the command line as a whole item rather than separate arguments but on the whole, isn't it better to be consistent? That means treating each argument as a separate filename and having to escape or quote special characters (including spaces)
You wouldn't want to know the trouble I've had trying to work with multiple levels of quoteing (") in windows. Now, was that "", """, """" or """"""?
I had this too. A note that said that nobody was home. Yet I work at home and had spent all day in the office about 25 ft from the front door.
Mind you, it seems like they never bother to knock anyway, just leave the package sitting there on the porch. Even if it's obviously a piece of computer equipment worth a couple of hundred dollars...
Just as bad, the Yahoo shopping application sees the.co.uk address I still use and refuses to accept my order as they "Dont ship to that location". Put in a generic.net or.com or.edu address and it goes through fine. Yet spookily enough, I have been sitting at the same location (Nashville, TN) the whole time.
What makes it even lamer is that the e-mail address entry is on the same page that you enter the shipping address so they should *know* that they won't be shipping abroad.
On the other hand, there's Best Buy who put their special offer leaflet on the web as a.pdf but disabled printing. And I wanted to specifically show a special offer to someone who didn't have a computer.
Fortunately, there are "tools" available to get around this kind of crap but we really shouldn't have to jump through hoops for this kind of thing.
3) "1" for Sales, "2" for checking your order status, "3" to hear about the latest and greatest offers and "4" for technical support
4) "1" for hardware, "2" for software
5) "1" if your computer is in the warranty period, "2" if not
6) "1", irrelevant option, "2", irrelevant option, "3", irrelevant option, "4", irrelevant option or stay on the line for a human operator
7) 180 minutes of waiting on the line
8) Level "1" tech support who will ask you if you want technical support, if you have a hardware or software problem and whether your computer is within its warranty period then will tell you that they'll call you back
9) Three or more calls before someone actually does call you back.
10) your phone bill, $220.85
Building your own system is great. If you can't get a part to work, give it to someone who has a use for it. If a part breaks, buy a new one to replace *then* try and get the broken one replaced and save the replacement as a spare to swap or give away. Upgrade your system incrementally as and when *you* care about the individual parts (I just swapped a 7 year old SB16 out of my Athlon)
I gave up when they dropped their Usenet archives (which google then dropped intot that rolw in a timely manner). Though I still went back occasionally when google couldn't search on the angle I wanted. Then they added some stuff that made the page refresh after every x seconds. Well, on dial on demand dialup, that sucks. So I started avoiding them. Now I'm no longer on dialup but I just avoid them out of habit.
You know, altavista used to publish the date that the pages they search were last indexed at the bottom of each search link. They dropped that off about six months ago. None of the dates were showing up as being 2001. I noticed that search for a page for a site I had updated about three months ago was still showing the previous data.
Rather, I have invented what I call 'bit-5' or 'CL-cryp' encryption. If the ascii code for a character in a message is between 65 and 90 or 97 and 122, flip bit 5 of the character.
Better yet would be to write a proxy that takes standard IRC client connections and then connects to the IRC server, encrypting/decrypting messages on the fly. Of course, then you're only as secure as the connection between your client and the proxy and DCC is still just as bad (though the proxy could intercept the DCC as well)
Rich
I once managed to kill the serial ports on a motherboard.
I had two PCs sitting next to each other. I had a shortage of UK power cables but I did have a US 2-pin power cable so I plugged that into an adapter and that powered computer #2. Computer #2 was headless but had a PSU with an oultet socket. I needed to power my digital camera so I used a hot-connector and plugged it into the outlet on computer #2 and the serial of computer #1.
OK, turns out that because it didn't have a proper ground, case of computer #2 was floating at around 90V. Therefore ground in camera floating at ~90V, therefore ground on serial cable floating at around 90V to computer #1 ground. When I plugged the serial into computer #1, I must have brushed the 90V shield against some pins. Dead serial port. When I noticed the serial port wasn't working properly, tried plugging it into the second one...
Ended up claiming on the house insurance (hardly worth it) and buying another.
I always used to get a great deal of milage out of a biker's leather jacket. Three pockets in the front and one on the sleeve provided plenty of room.
The great thing is that leather can be worn even in pretty hot temperatures due to the breathing of the leather and the tendency for the jacket to hang away from the body when unzipped. You do get a lot of people asking you if you're hot.
When it finally does get to hot, just take it off and sling it over your shoulder.
Unfortunately, some bugger stole mine from my car. I hope to get another sometime soon though.
That's very true actually. I mean, I'm pro *nix, anti Microsoft/Windows but lets not forget that buffer overflows come from the use of the crappily designed stdlibc which is only still a standard because of years of acceptance in the Unix community.
I mean, sure it's the developers fault for using these functions but as a community, we should have kicked scanf and friends out decades ago. Compilers should complain if you use them. Heck, they should refuse to use them unless you define #NOTTOBEUSEDONAPRODUCTIONSYSTEM or something.
Slashdot Mirror
And unfortunately, the old GPL version does not display properly in IE. Does your patch fix that?
Rich
So what are the risks for other su root programs? As a user, can I just set these env vars and run the programs and get root? Should su root programs be statically linked?
Hmm, actually, thinking about it, I'd probably better just research this.
Rich
Yeah, don't be so insensitive.
Send your wife instead.
Rich
I have a couple of small programs that I wrote to do this to a LP I sampled a while back (it was unavailable on CD at the time). They are not very good but they worked and are available from http://www.perihelion.demon.co.uk/oss
:)
One attempts to find quiet points in the music (the algorithm is close but not quite right) the other allows you to save chunks out of a long wav file to shorter wav files.
It's been a while since I wrote them but I think they come with source. Err, actually looking at them, that's all there is. Happy compiling
Rich
These things are supposed to be able to play VCDs, CDs and MP3 CDs. I bought two DAV 310s, one for me, one for my brother. It just about plays CDs but tends to skip at the slightest touch, I have not been able to create a VCD that plays on it without jumping and jerking (and from my research, neither has anybody else) and it's pretty hopeless at MP3 as well, I had to try five or six different encoders before I found one that didn't produce horrendous artifacts (these artifacts didn't show up under other players either). Add to that that it crashes, powers down sometimes when you hit stop and sometimes just plain refuses to do anything, takes ages to read in the list of songs and has a very long gap between songs.
I have to say that this device was probably the worst value for money purchase I have *ever* made. I just can't say how much they suck.
Rich
I bought a couple of Cybikos a year ago. I felt that they were actually pretty good value for the money but I could see where there were some shortfalls and I predicted that it wouldn't be long before they released a new version with some of the better features. Cybiko denied they had anything planned and a lot of people said it wouldn't happen but *smug*.
Seriously though, these are cool devices. The SDK is open and free although documentation was a little lacking last time I checked. There is a whole host of games and apps for them (as with the palm) and a thriving developer community. Also, one of the coolest things is that if you have two of these things, you can use one as a tunnel, connect to your PC and have wireless internet on the other one.
I was planning on writing some apps for mine but unfortunately, events overtook me this year. Now they have this new one out, I shall have to have another look (I hope the Xtreme has a serial port like the classic)
Rich
And in NT:
C:>touch abc def
Can't touch abc - No such file or directory
Can't touch def - No such file or directory
Moral: In Windows, never expect the same thing to work the same way twice. Not that Unix is any better in those regards of course.
It's true that there are some apps that consider the command line as a whole item rather than separate arguments but on the whole, isn't it better to be consistent? That means treating each argument as a separate filename and having to escape or quote special characters (including spaces)
You wouldn't want to know the trouble I've had trying to work with multiple levels of quoteing (") in windows. Now, was that "", """, """" or """"""?
Even better, it's not documented.
Rich
I had this too. A note that said that nobody was home. Yet I work at home and had spent all day in the office about 25 ft from the front door.
Mind you, it seems like they never bother to knock anyway, just leave the package sitting there on the porch. Even if it's obviously a piece of computer equipment worth a couple of hundred dollars...
Rich
What makes it even lamer is that the e-mail address entry is on the same page that you enter the shipping address so they should *know* that they won't be shipping abroad.
Just plain old stupid I guess.
Rich
Rich
Fortunately, there are "tools" available to get around this kind of crap but we really shouldn't have to jump through hoops for this kind of thing.
Rich
Any news on how the OPEC countries are hurting from the lower use of their product?
Rich
Actually, you get a whole bunch of numbers:
1) The number to call
2) "1" for Spanish, "2" for English
3) "1" for Sales, "2" for checking your order status, "3" to hear about the latest and greatest offers and "4" for technical support
4) "1" for hardware, "2" for software
5) "1" if your computer is in the warranty period, "2" if not
6) "1", irrelevant option, "2", irrelevant option, "3", irrelevant option, "4", irrelevant option or stay on the line for a human operator
7) 180 minutes of waiting on the line
8) Level "1" tech support who will ask you if you want technical support, if you have a hardware or software problem and whether your computer is within its warranty period then will tell you that they'll call you back
9) Three or more calls before someone actually does call you back.
10) your phone bill, $220.85
Building your own system is great. If you can't get a part to work, give it to someone who has a use for it. If a part breaks, buy a new one to replace *then* try and get the broken one replaced and save the replacement as a spare to swap or give away. Upgrade your system incrementally as and when *you* care about the individual parts (I just swapped a 7 year old SB16 out of my Athlon)
Rich
You know, altavista used to publish the date that the pages they search were last indexed at the bottom of each search link. They dropped that off about six months ago. None of the dates were showing up as being 2001. I noticed that search for a page for a site I had updated about three months ago was still showing the previous data.
yup, altavista sucks.
Rich
Rather, I have invented what I call 'bit-5' or 'CL-cryp' encryption. If the ascii code for a character in a message is between 65 and 90 or 97 and 122, flip bit 5 of the character.
An example encrypted message would be:
tRY AND DECODE THIS, SUCKERS! yOU'LL NEVER DO IT!
See, much more secure
The sooner California slides into the sea, the better...
Rich
Better yet would be to write a proxy that takes standard IRC client connections and then connects to the IRC server, encrypting/decrypting messages on the fly. Of course, then you're only as secure as the connection between your client and the proxy and DCC is still just as bad (though the proxy could intercept the DCC as well) Rich
We managed to save the data on the hard-drive using Linux fdisk. Though why the partition table was nuked by a static discharge, I don't know.
Rich
I had two PCs sitting next to each other. I had a shortage of UK power cables but I did have a US 2-pin power cable so I plugged that into an adapter and that powered computer #2. Computer #2 was headless but had a PSU with an oultet socket. I needed to power my digital camera so I used a hot-connector and plugged it into the outlet on computer #2 and the serial of computer #1.
OK, turns out that because it didn't have a proper ground, case of computer #2 was floating at around 90V. Therefore ground in camera floating at ~90V, therefore ground on serial cable floating at around 90V to computer #1 ground. When I plugged the serial into computer #1, I must have brushed the 90V shield against some pins. Dead serial port. When I noticed the serial port wasn't working properly, tried plugging it into the second one...
Ended up claiming on the house insurance (hardly worth it) and buying another.
Rich
That would be India I believe.
Rich
The great thing is that leather can be worn even in pretty hot temperatures due to the breathing of the leather and the tendency for the jacket to hang away from the body when unzipped. You do get a lot of people asking you if you're hot.
When it finally does get to hot, just take it off and sling it over your shoulder.
Unfortunately, some bugger stole mine from my car. I hope to get another sometime soon though.
Rich
Rich
No, you are wrong.
Rich
That's very true actually. I mean, I'm pro *nix, anti Microsoft/Windows but lets not forget that buffer overflows come from the use of the crappily designed stdlibc which is only still a standard because of years of acceptance in the Unix community.
I mean, sure it's the developers fault for using these functions but as a community, we should have kicked scanf and friends out decades ago. Compilers should complain if you use them. Heck, they should refuse to use them unless you define #NOTTOBEUSEDONAPRODUCTIONSYSTEM or something.
Rich
Example: 1/2 of 50% = 25% (or 1/4)
Rich