I read a post the other day about Bi Directional printing. The post was on Schneier on Security and is about how malicious code can be inserted into source code. It does this by looking innocent. However when the compiler reads the file, it gets parts of it in different order than what you see on the screen. I think we can presume the compiler gets the raw file and what we see on the screen has been rearranged according to the constraints of the window and the formatting control characters embedded in the file.
Golden Earring - Twilight Zone (Extended Long Version)
Opening Salvo
There was an example posted so I thought I would try it out. The sample, however, did not have the control codes embedded in it, all it gave you were the two examples, one with control codes active and one without. So I thought I would give it a try, I mean it shouldn't be two hard to open up some kind of text editor and insert a couple of control codes, should it? Well, for some reason, man, the find function on my text editor has flat quit working. Do-do-Do-do - are we in the Twilight Zone?
I've been threatening to replace my Linux box with a Chromebox. You can buy them now. A few years ago you couldn't, you had to roll your own, and that was too much trouble. I'd gone through that in setting up my Linux box, but after having been using it for years without having to get back under the hood* I'm not keen to do so now.
I've been threatening to replace my Linux box with a Chromebox. You don't suppose the Linux box was listening in, do you? I mean it's what I use for all my web surfing, surfing for a new Chromebook (drool). Do I get a high power one or do I get a one with a Celeron processor? I think the high power ones also use an Intel processor with some kind of alpha-numeric name. And then there's the question of memory. I think I have a choice of 4, 8 or 16 gigabytes. I think this box, the one I'm using, has 4, but I can't be bothered to check. I guess I'm a little irritated, all that time I spent screwing around, waiting for computers to boot up. Maybe that's why I did it, I was a glutton for punishment, people looked at the job in passing and just passed on by. A smarter me might have done that, but I guess that's just who I am. There is a certain satisfaction in successfully jumping through all the hoops and finally getting the machine to behave.
A couple of weeks ago, four of us spent the afternoon moving a big piece of cast iron a couple of miles across the west side. Any complaints? No, just a chorus of 'that was fun, we should do it again some time'. Probably deprived some honest hardworking men a day's wages, but not everyone has an unlimited budget for hobbies.
Oh yeah, the control codes, from Google search:
I'm not quite sure just how or what to actually insert in a file, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
*Capiche 'under the hood'? To work on an automobile engine, which used to be a very common activity but hardly ever happens any more, you had to open the hood, so all the time you were working on the engine, you were 'under the hood'. For some reason, most people, maybe 95 percent, won't ever engage in it. It might be lack of aptitude, or just simple disinclination, or possibly even a gut level revulsion. I don't know, people are weird. Anyway, 'under the hood' means getting down into the inner workings of of whatever mechanism, virtual or mechanical, is under discussion. That's a weird way to put it, 'under discussion'. The thing is broken and it needs to be fixed, there doesn't need to be any discussion. Aha! But anything worth repairing that breaks down is going to cause a discussion. Is it worth fixing? Can it be fixed? Who can do it? Should we just buy another one, it'd be quicker, etc., etc., etc.
Update April 2022 replaced missing video.
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