Blog-o-Mix

(romanian)
Daniel Raduta este un prieten si un coleg de grupa de la facultate. E o persoana deosebita, si am ramas fara cuvinte cand am alfat despre diagnosticul lui.

Daca crezi ca poti/vrei sa donezi - te rog doneaza cat poti, chiar si cea mai mica suma. Daca stii pe cineva care poate/vrea sa doneze - te rog da anuntul umanitar mai departe. Daca ai un facebook si vrei sa il sustii - te rog sa te alaturi si tu!

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TV-B-Gone experiments - Part 1

Prolog

For those who don’t know, TV-B-Gone is a device that makes TVs… well, to be gone… (As in Boris-The-Bullet-Dodger). It was invented by Mitch - Altman, and is sold as a ready (but limited in flexibility) unit, as well as a soldering/programming kit from Limor aka LadyAda.

I bought my TV-B-Gone kit version 1.1 from LadyAda some time back, but only recently with help from VadimBo, we got it soldered and (re)programmed.

Just to give you an idea what can be done (but not actually advised though ) - check “Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES”

To the point

The downsides of the version 1.1 are:

• there are mainly NA codes only supported in firmware 1.1 and 1.1b
• there are only around 40+ codes supported in firmware 1.1 and 1.1b

So, I backported from tvbgone firmware 1.2 (Caitsith corrected WORLDcodes.c #ifdef version) into firmware 1.1b the following:

• removed NAcodes, which are UNcompressed version of limited codes table
• added WORLDcodes, which are compressed/optimized version of extended codes table
• modified main() to use compressed codes table routines
• modified Makefile to use EU/NA/both tables

Downloads

• Sources and .hex of firmware 1.1b for tvbgone containing backport of WORLDcodes from 1.2
• .hex of the original shipped “factory” version of tvbgone 1.1 from LadyAda (in case you want to restore original)

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Well, Samy is my hero is cool… but Pasha is my hero is hotter now

Yes you can Pasha (aka Pavel Turcu, aka Pavel Turkish )!

“Top views Moldova Eurovision 2010 on YouTube”

“Pavel Turcu - Hitler scene remix”

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-Da cum te numesti ?
-Ei cum ma numesc, Vanya
-Pai Vanya si mai cum ?
-Cum si mai cum ? Ap’ Vanya

-Da cel care ti-a dat tigarile e roman sau din Republica Moldova?
-Ti-am spus ca-i moldovan !

UPDATE 20101012

By a very nice coincidence I have bumped into this interesting paper (dating around 15 Jul 2008) - “BREAKING THE BANK - VULNERABILITIES IN NUMERIC PROCESSING WITHIN FINANCIAL APPLICATIONS” - ENJOY the reading!

Given I currently work in a telecom billing software company - I just cannot find enough words and meanings to confirm with sorrow that pretty-fucking-many of my fellow programmers do not give a shi…ny glass for avoiding this kind of problems. Worst, they don’t even realize it :-S…

PS: …and YES, Bank Of Cyprus (along with its new migrated Java/JSF-based banking application - a special post on this to follow) allows/uses:

• input like “1E+3″ which gets translated into “1000″
• “round-to-nearest, ties away from zero” for 3rd decimal, i.e. “0,004″ gets translated to “0,00″ and “0,007″ gets translated to “0,01″

Happy hacking…

Money

When it comes to speaking about money, a lot of people get interested. And nowadays most money discussion evolve around or near-by the EUR-USD exchange rates.

Some people (including me sometime ) are unhappy to depend and always lose their honestly earned savings because of some avid and greedy circles of interest are playing with exchange rates and make them uncontrollable…

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