Craig Talbert’s Neighborhood

"Latin America" was coined to describe all romance language-speaking America, including Quebec, Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, and French Guiana in South America. Most people who use the phrase today should actually be using the more accurate "Ibero-America" instead.

I'm sure I have no idea why my wife won't let me choose a Portuguese name for our child. And Agostinho, Caetano, Cezar, Claudio, Diamantina, Fausto, Filomena, Gaspar, Gonçalo, Lourenço, Mafalda, Olívia, Saturnino, Sebastião, Teodoro, Vasco, are all such fine names.

Compare C# versus VB syntax: "if (obj != null && obj.IsConnected)" vs. "If obj IsNot Nothing AndAlso obj.IsConnected Then". In its quest to be simpler to understand VB has become only more confusing.

I was interested by the result of this statement: MessageBox.Show((1 / 0).ToString()). A number divided by zero evaluates to "Infinity"

Also: I think we've officially run out of news when these have all been Google's top stories.

I find it intriguing that Symbol barcode scanners, which are used by nearly all US retail outlets from small thrift stores to large chains like Wal-Mart, can be programmed to do anything (including to reject UPCs) by scanning special barcodes. I'm certainly not advising it, but I wonder what would happen if one were to print out the above barcode (which I've found works on all Symbol scanners whether they be handheld or mounted or flatbed like at the grocery store) on sticker paper and slap it on an item. When I worked in the pharmacy it took 2 days to get a technician from Symbol to come down for a repair, and a simple reset to factory defaults wouldn't work because the scanners need to be set up a certain way for the particular way they interface with the Point-of-Sale system for that company.

I'm just saying, it's interesting. You shouldn't do it though, even if you could cause a complete shutdown of a retail outlet and probably not be legally responsible for the damages if they figure out what you did. Wouldn't be proper.

Addendum: I completely forgot about NCR scanners. They've got market dominance in the flatbed scanners at the grocery store (they're usually metal whereas Symbol's are hard plastic). One would need to check the brandname printed on the barcode scanner. For flatbeds it's usually printed to the right of the glass pane, and for handhelds/fixed scanners it's usually on the back of the head. NCR is much smarter, in that you have to scan a whole series of barcodes in order to do anything meaningful. There are a few standard barcodes like "Reset Tallies" and "Firmware Flashing" that sound nice but one can't be sure what effect they'd have. Consult the manual if interested.

All too often I see programs written in .NET whose only security is to change the scope of stuff to "private" or "internal". Declaring the scope of a something is for your benefit only; it does nothing keep out someone from accessing your private parts using System.Reflection. Below is the example circulating online of how to pull all the private methods from a class and execute them.

using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Collections;
using System.IO;

namespace Private2Public
{

 /// 
 /// Summary description for cCallPrivate.
 /// 

 public class CallPrivate
 {
  private const string final  = "Void Finalize()";
  private const string getHash = "Int32 GetHashCode()";
  private const string boolEquals = "Boolean Equals(System.Object)";
  private const string toStr  = "System.String ToString()";
  private const string getType = "System.Type GetType()";
  private const string memClone = "System.Object MemberwiseClone()";
  
  /// 
  /// 
  /// 
  public CallPrivate()
  {
  }


  public object GetPrivateField( object instance, string name )
  {
   
   Type t  = instance.GetType();
   FieldInfo f     = t.GetField( "wasCalled", BindingFlags.Instance 
    | BindingFlags.NonPublic 
    | BindingFlags.Public );
   

   return f.GetValue( instance );
  }
 
  public object GetPrivateMethod( object instance, string name, params object[] paramList )
  {
   Type t     = instance.GetType();
   Type[] paramTypes  = new Type[ paramList.Length ];
   
   for ( int i = 0; i < paramList.Length; i++ )
   {
    paramTypes[i] = paramList[i].GetType();
   }
 

   MethodInfo m  = t.GetMethod( name, BindingFlags.Instance 
    | BindingFlags.NonPublic 
    | BindingFlags.Public, 
    null, 
    paramTypes, 
    null );
  
   
   return m.Invoke( instance, paramList );
  }


  public ArrayList ListPrivateMethods(Type t)
  {
   ArrayList arr = new ArrayList();
   for(int i = 0; i <  t.GetMethods(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
    BindingFlags.Public | 
    BindingFlags.Instance).Length ; i++)
   {
    switch (t.GetMethods(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
     BindingFlags.Public | 
     BindingFlags.Instance)[i].ToString())
    {
     case final:
      continue;
     case getHash:
      continue;
     case boolEquals:
      continue;
     case toStr:
      continue;
     case getType:
      continue;
     case memClone:
      continue;
     default:
      arr.Add(t.GetMethods(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
       BindingFlags.Public | 
       BindingFlags.Instance)[i].ToString());
      break;
    }
   }
   return arr;
  }


  public ArrayList ListPrivateFields(Type t)
  {
   ArrayList arr = new ArrayList();
   for(int i = 0; i <  t.GetFields(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
    BindingFlags.Public | 
    BindingFlags.Instance).Length ; i++)
   {
    switch (t.GetFields(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
     BindingFlags.Public | 
     BindingFlags.Instance)[i].ToString())
    {
     case "Void Finalize()":
      continue;
     case "Int32 GetHashCode()":
      continue;
     case "Boolean Equals(System.Object)":
      continue;
     case "System.String ToString()":
      continue;
     case "System.Type GetType()":
      continue;
     case "System.Object MemberwiseClone()":
      continue;
     default:
      arr.Add(t.GetFields(BindingFlags.NonPublic | 
       BindingFlags.Public | 
       BindingFlags.Instance)[i].ToString());
      break;
    }
   }
   return arr;
  }



  public void WriteMethodsToFile(Type t, string FileName)
  {
   ArrayList methods = ListPrivateMethods(t);
   ArrayList fields = ListPrivateFields(t);
    
   if(File.Exists(FileName))
   {
    File.Delete(FileName);
   }
   StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(FileName,true);    
   for(byte i = 0; i < methods.Count; i++)
   {
    sw.WriteLine("Methods:  " );
    sw.WriteLine(methods[i].ToString());
    
   }
   methods.Clear();

   for(byte i = 0; i < fields.Count; i++)
   {
    if(i==0)
    {
     sw.WriteLine("");
     sw.WriteLine("");
     sw.WriteLine("Vars:  " );
    }
    
    sw.WriteLine(fields[i].ToString());
   
   }
   sw.Close();
   fields.Clear();
  }
 }
}

Well, the verdict's out: Our apartment is literally infested with pseudoscorpions. And not the sunflower hat wearing kind either, the nigga I cut you kind.

Now now, I can already hear you dingbats clamoring "Oh but vargtimmen née schwarzer_tod, don't you get it? Spiders and pseudoscorpions are perfectly harmless and they prey on other household pests!" That is just plain RE-TART-ED. That's like putting millipedes in my vagina to eat all the centipedes, or snakes on a plane to scare off all the negroes. Or releasing a cage of wild snapes to thin out the herd of dumbledores. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum, ad hominem, ad renal, ad d... ooh, a chinchilla! OH FUR CUTE!!!!!!!!!! baybeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I'd like to read overheardeverywhere.com but reading 40 dialogues per day from Overheard in NYC is already straining the limits of my free time to read RSS feeds. Some of the stuff I'm missing out on--

Tara Reid: I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist.

Eight-year-old: I believe the fanny dance is in order here.
Amused passerby: Awww, what is the fanny dance?
Eight-year-old: Wouldn't you like to know.

Teen daughter: You're a dickwad.
Mom: No, you're a dickwad.
Teen daughter: No, you're a dickwad.
Mom: No, you're a dickwad.
Granny, with English accent: What's a dickwad?
Teen daughter: It's a pile of jism, Granny.
Dad: Okay, family meeting right now!

On the subway
Toronto, Ontario
Canadia

"Of course, I am a pure and absolute democrat. But you know what the problem is? Not the problem, a tragedy, a real tragedy. The tragedy is that I am alone. I am the only such pure democrat. There are no such other democrats in the world. Let us see what is happening in North America: just horrible torture. The homeless. Guantanamo. Detentions without normal court proceedings. Let us look at what is happening in Europe. Violence against demonstrators. The use of gas to disperse rallies. Killings of demonstrators . . . .We had hope with these guys from the Ukraine. But even those guys have completely disgraced themselves – they are moving towards a tyranny. They are violating the constitution, all the laws. After the death of Mahatma Ghandi (sic.), I have nobody to talk to."

- Dima Putin

Trix+cereal

Any over 20 is going to be less than impressed with Trix's "brand new shape", which is suspiciously exactly like the original shape. It's probably either too expensive to make shaped Trix or the line broke down and they had to switch to the old one for a while, either way I wonder how they're explaining it away in the commercials. "Lucky, I think your poops are magical! Let's coat them in froot flavor!"

Craigslist is making me SOOOO ANGRY. There are a bunch of idiots from places like Chicago and California posting job ads in my section with "local preferred" and "WILL NOT PAY FOR RELOCATION" tags. Worse still, there's a mom and pop staffing agency, some married couple named "Michael and Patty" that keep posting job ads on behalf of other companies and they clearly have no understanding of what any of the requirements mean. They demand:

Desk Top Applications
3.0 Frame Work
Web Services - need to know and use
Visual Studio 2005
SOA (service oriented archetecture)
SQL Server (windows based)
C Sharp on a .net platfrom

Another woman demands "6+ years of C# experience", when the first .NET targeted Visual Studio came out in 2002.

The headlines are embarrassingly corny, like "Looking for a Java Super Hero" and "TTTEEECCCHHHNNNIIICCCAAALLL AAANNNAAALLLYYYSSSTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I imagine they must get their HR people fresh out of Habbo Hotel... they're not really a far cry from the obese kids yelling "CHANGE UR CLOSE AND MISH 2 GET IN" to the leaden-eyed ewes in their anteroom.

Yes those are my real muscles

Can anyone tell me what's going on here?