Category Archives: EN

Anything that does not fit into other categories …

Face the truth

I think it’s time to face an inconvenient truth. Despite all the marketing Al-Qaeda could not establish itself as the friendly terrorist organization it once aimed to be. It’s time to change their image and even though I haven’t been … Continue reading

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Nomen est omen

Just another funny acronym I stumbled over lately: TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). Despite the Orwellian naming, every geek will immediately come to think of: “it’s a tarp!!!”, which is a deliberately misspelled “it’s a trap!!!” .. well, is it???

Posted in /dev/null, EN, Thoughts | Leave a comment

Bummer – quite literally

New situation at airports in the near future. After they want to allow drinks again now (at least within Europe), a new threat appears: the ass bomber! Bend over please, Sir! // Oliver Update: It appears the restrictions for liquids … Continue reading

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Ukraine

Long time no see. Now that I’m back in Ukraine after eight years and almost departing again, old and good memories came up again. Sure, the roads right after the Polish/Ukrainian border still suck. True, the people still tend their … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Thoughts | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Gas home delivery

Wow. Today I had a pretty pleasant experience. Having asked a friend with a car to help me get a 10 kg gas (yes gas, not gasoline ;)) bottle refilled it turned out he wouldn’t manage to before the weekend. … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Island/Iceland/Ísland | 3 Comments

“das Mädchen” – why is it grammatically neutral?

The question that comes up most often when someone is about to tell me how terribly difficult it is to learn the German language is: why is “das Mädchen” (German for “girl”) a neuter form and not of feminine gender? … Continue reading

Posted in /dev/null, DE, EN | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

Oh damn … debug symbols as MSI (upd)

Yesterday I still defended them, now I have to criticize the guys in Redmond again. Since Windows 7 the debug symbols are only delivered as MSI, no more as an EXE file that can be extracted to anywhere and then … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Programming, Software, Thoughts | 2 Comments

I’m always wondering how upset the Microsoft folks must get

Most blue screens nowadays are caused by third-party drivers and a big share of these by security products that use improper hooking of system calls, such as Kaspersky did. I’m not exactly a Microsoft fanboy, but people should really get … Continue reading

Posted in /dev/null, EN, Programming, Software | Leave a comment

Dear technical writer (@Microsoft)

You write in the documentation of NtDeviceIoControlFile. Deprecated. Builds descriptors for the supplied buffer(s) and passes the untyped data to the device driver associated with the file handle. NtDeviceIoControlFile is superseded by DeviceIoControl. Could you please be a little more … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Reversing | Leave a comment

Little changes with big effects …

I’m using screen more and more, but this night I ran into a problem I hadn’t anticipated. I was trying to establish SSH sessions inside “pre-created” windows (using a specific screen profile). Now I wanted to automatically call an initial … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Linux | Leave a comment

“Bad” Windows XP

So Microsoft offers a downgrade to the Windows 7 pre-predecessor Windows XP for everyone buying a computer until end of April 2011. Nice. Maybe the fellows at Redmond should take a minute or two and ask themselves why people are … Continue reading

Posted in EN, Software, Thoughts | 2 Comments

Screen and byobu

So far when using screen I was always using very simple steps and using the simplest features. But given that PuTTY doesn’t feature tabs, it’s pretty cool what you can do with screen. You can either start one or multiple … Continue reading

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Back

The comments are enabled again for most posts. Sorry that it took longer than anticipated. But now I’m up-to-date with WordPress 😉

Posted in EN | 1 Comment

Nested GNU make files …

Sometimes you want to build potential goals of nested make files, i.e. make files that reside in a different folder. The best method I’ve been able to come up with so far was this one: # Declare some (immediate) constants … Continue reading

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Slay ’em!

Today I found a highly useful tool called slay. It allows one to kick all processes of a particular user. So if I wanted to kick user joe I’d say: slay joe // Oliver

Posted in EN, Linux | 4 Comments

Maybe helpful for others …

Check out this comment to an old post about the WD MyBook World Edition. Maybe it helps you as well. // Oliver

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Yoggie for the win …

Yoggie Open Firewall Pico is a pretty cool invention. As a geek I was basically forced to get myself one of those miniature Linux firewalls. Now, no one will deny that Yoggie exists for security reasons and although the separation … Continue reading

Posted in EN, IT Security, Software | Comments Off on Yoggie for the win …

Package management

http://www.cromwell-intl.com/unix/package-management.html

Posted in /dev/null, EN, Software | Leave a comment

Shortest FAQ ever

The Official God FAQ

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Russian?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrRJKTFc_ps

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