Aw dawg, this is just my whateva-whateva site.

Man, ACPI sucked when it first came out.

skankin and I fought this renegade Gateway machine yesterday… it was a first generation P4 (<2GHz). It was working fine… until SP2 was installed.

Then, on bootup, it got the following error [paraphrased]:
c0000221 unknown hard error - NTDLL.DLL

This error is fully reproducable (format, install XP with SP1a, working fine, install SP2, boom || format, install XP with SP2 slipstreamed, boom) and is always the same. It's definitely hardware-related.

Tested the memory thoroughly, replaced the optical drive, even tried another power supply. I had the idea to flash the BIOS, since that's usually where the original SP2 problems came from [not SP2 itself, but shoddy BIOSes]. I'm skeptical because I know that SP2 brings out the bugs that already existed in hardware [and people usually just blame Windows for "sucking", when in reality it's the hardware that sucks].

We toiled away playing with hardware for a while, and skankin had to go to an appointment, so I started experimenting with it on my own. I decided to force a different hardware abstraction layer [HAL]. To force a different HAL, tap F5 while Windows setup is starting up [at the same point where you would normally press F6 to install a mass storage device driver, scsi, sata, etc]. I chose to force ACPI, to see if Windows was simply detecting it wrong [read: BIOS reporting it wrong]. No go. In fact, it was even worse. I got a STOP 0x8E instead of the hard error, and I got it much sooner than before. Ok, now I've proven that this BIOS' support for ACPI sucks. On to the meat of the experiment:

Standard PC. ACPI is usually tied to APM, and as such, will always present you with the "It's now safe to turn off your computer" message when you go to turn off the computer – which is pretty much the only setback I can think of when not using ACPI. As an added bonus, IRQ sharing is impossible while under 'Standard PC' HAL. Hooray! [IRQ sharing should be abolished. Actually, IRQs should be abolished. Go Mac!]

After installing the Standard PC HAL, the thing ran like a dream. Guess what? The BIOS on this motherboard sucks. Another one bites the dust…

Go here.

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/nikki/ and mspaint art.
Very impressive.

Linux hippies can continue throwing around flowers and dancing all they want.

I like this guy's attitude ;)

Good freaking god man, this is brilliance!
Lego mecha, weaponry/ordinance… brilliant!

Nick, this post's for you. GET CRACKIN'. See, people are very creative. Now you've gotta do something creative!

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while (because it's hilarious): FakeAP

If one access point is good, 53,000 must be better.
Black Alchemy's Fake AP generates thousands of counterfeit 802.11b access points. Hide in plain sight amongst Fake AP's cacophony of beacon frames.

I love the word cacophony.

Anyway, I found Fake AP via this page on tomsnetworking.com, which describes how the feds [and of course, leet hax0rs] are able to bust 128-bit WEP keys in just minutes. That's funny too. I found *that* page via 62nds.com, the authors of Windizupdate [mentioned on the forums here, prior to my site's shift into a blog]. Their site is kind of weird, and contains basically useless, archaic information about old viruses, how to make Grolier's Encyclopedia 7.0 for Windows 3.1 work in Windows 95, and other drivel, but Windizupdate is definitely a gem on their site.

So we should all be using WPA now (not WPA-PSK).

cdtray is a small program I wrote for a friend. It's pretty crappy. You even get to see a console window for a moment while the drive opens. All it does is open and close whatever drive you tell it to. That's what he wanted, that's what I gave him. I'm sure I could have made it prettier. I didn't. It was a 5-minute program. :)

To Protocol: the link has been fixed. You can now find the cdtray program here. In the future, please leave comments on an existing post rather than writing a draft post ;) [I fixed the problem that allowed you to do that in the first place].

Syntax examples:
cdtray.exe open D:
cdtray.exe close E:


The [lame] source code! :

program ejectcd;
uses
 SysUtils, MMSystem;
var
 str, str2: string;
begin
 if (ParamCount < 2) then halt;
 str := lowercase(trim(ParamStr(1)));
 str2 := 'open cdaudio!' + uppercase(trim(ParamStr(2))) + ' alias thedrive';
 mciSendString(PAnsiChar(trim(str2)), nil, 0, 0);
 if (str = 'close') then mciSendString('set thedrive door closed wait', nil, 0, 0);
 if (str = 'open') then mciSendString('set thedrive door open wait', nil, 0, 0);
end.

Ah I love stuff like this!

http://www.fusor.us/lockpick.html

From the site:

I have had to throw out several locks because I have lost the combination. I recently found a lock and I really hate to throw these things out, and I'm sure you do to (since you're reading this), so here it is: I have read many places online that this is completely impossible, but it's not. It takes a little math, a lot of brute forcing, and some thinking. This is a step by step guide to cracking a master lock combination.