Humor Random Comments Thread

[Urwumpe]

A cable car to Germanys highest summit got badly damaged during an emergency exercise, its operations are stopped until somebody can find a way how to get the damaged cars from the cable, they are hanging high above ground between the two stations.

The operator had been exercising an evacuation using a temporary cable car, when a chain broke and the temporary car rolled uncontrolled into the regular car. No humans had been involved in the accident luckily and nobody got harmed.


https://www.dw.com/en/accident-paralyzes-zugspitz-cable-car/a-45486129

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Skycrane and a seriously ballsy worker. :lol:

 

[Notebook]

Accidents can happen...

N.

 

[Notebook]

Another self-test….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-45561194

 

[Zandy12]

Step 1: Go to work
Step 2: Skip lunch to leave work early
Step 3: Drive like a psycho maniac in traffic to get home
Step 4: Open fridge grab energy drink
Step 5: Orbiter.
Step 6: Find time to sleep...I think I forgot to eat, I'll do it tomorrow.

 

[Notebook]

You would think someone would have said something...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45572275

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

You would think someone would have said something...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45572275

N.

Just wait until it exceeds Mach 2, then it will be 45 cm longer and the missing letter will appear. :lol:

 

[C3PO]

You would think someone would have said something...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45572275

I'm guessing the situation was similar to this:

 

[Notebook]

I suppose their is some excuse for that(not native language, taking it literal, thinking its a graphic?).

However, mucking around with one of the worlds oldest air-lines, and a classic brand name. Anyone would think they used to called just Cathey...

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

Does somebody know it it is possible to create a 64bit PE executable with a 32 bit compiler?

I had to reverse engineer a faulty binary here and found out it failed early during startup because of the following madness:

Call to GetProcAddress of windows -> RAX contains 44-bit address of the DLL function
OR EAX, EAX -> upper 32 bits of RAX are set to zero, instead of just checking if RAX is non-zero
Some error handling happens
CALL RAX -> explodes because the address is truncated to 32 bit.

 

[kuddel]

Does somebody know it it is possible to create a 64bit PE executable with a 32 bit compiler?

Isn't /LARGEADDRESSAWARE (linker option) exactly supposed for that?

 

[Urwumpe]

Isn't /LARGEADDRESSAWARE (linker option) exactly supposed for that?

I am not sure after reading the documentation again, but it could possibly cause it.

 

[Linguofreak]

Does somebody know it it is possible to create a 64bit PE executable with a 32 bit compiler?

If it weren't, how would the first 64-bit compiler have been created?

 

[Urwumpe]

If it weren't, how would the first 64-bit compiler have been created?

By having a 64 bit compiler compiled as 32 bit application? :hmm:

 

[jangofett287]

Isn't /LARGEADDRESSAWARE (linker option) exactly supposed for that?

No. Large address aware means a program is capable of using the whole 4GB of virtual address space available to a 32 bit program as opposed to the 2GB Windows normally restricts you to. If any pointers in the program use signed integers instead of unsigned for some reason bad things happen.

As to the actual question of trans-compiling 64 bit exes on 32 bit platforms I'm not sure. I doubt you can do it with MSVC. At a guess GCC might be able to, but then you have to deal with all the hassle of setting it up on Windows.

Is there a specific reason you can't use a 64 bit compiler?

 

[kuddel]

Yes, after looking at that again, it is more just a flag to be set in the PE header, so the OS is allowed to give it addresses > 2GB.
Could it be that Urwumpes troublesome exe has (erroneously) set that flag?
And could that flag be removed/unset?

editbin seems to be a tool to try:
https://maheshkumar.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/what-is-editbin-largeaddressaware-and-when-to-use/

 

[Urwumpe]

Yes, after looking at that again, it is more just a flag to be set in the PE header, so the OS is allowed to give it addresses > 2GB.
Could it be that Urwumpes troublesome exe has (erroneously) set that flag?
And could that flag be removed/unset?

editbin seems to be a tool to try:
https://maheshkumar.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/what-is-editbin-largeaddressaware-and-when-to-use/

No, the problem is, it is running as 64 bit application - anytime you are not using a special prefix to an instruction, it is assumed to use 64 bit registers. So are also the windows libraries, that are included into the address space. Those OR instructions are using a prefix to use 32 bit registers only.

---------- Post added at 13:35 ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 ----------

The pog fires near Meppen are now officially a disaster, 8 square kilometers of pog are burning now up to 1 m deep underground. It all started at the beginning of the week with a small fire after missile tests of the German army at the local test center, which couldn't be contained because one fire fighting vehicle was already out of order and the other one failed on the way to the fire.

They are preparing now to evacuate two villages with about 1000 citizens.

The smoke of the fire is already easily visible on satellite images:

https://www.dw.com/en/german-military-rocket-tests-cause-two-week-moorland-fire/g-45573308

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Should have taken a page from the Swedes and bombed it early on. :lol:

And yes, the Swedish Air Force did actually bomb a small fire on a bombing range this year. The fire was in a hard to reach area, so they hit it with a 2000-pound JDAM. Results were listed as "encouraging".

 

[kuddel]

No, the problem is, it is running as 64 bit application - anytime you are not using a special prefix to an instruction, it is assumed to use 64 bit registers. So are also the windows libraries, that are included into the address space. Those OR instructions are using a prefix to use 32 bit registers only.

So the application programmer did something stupid like casting a void pointer to int (or something like that).

Just an idea: Can't you run it as 32bit? I mean the "Compatibility Mode" -> "Run as Windows 98" via right click...

The image is from a German system, but as you've asked it should make sense to you

 

[Urwumpe]

So the application programmer did something stupid like casting a void pointer to int (or something like that).

Just an idea: Can't you run it as 32bit? I mean the "Compatibility Mode" -> "Run as Windows 98" via right click...

The image is from a German system, but as you've asked it should make sense to you

Maybe this works, can try it tomorrow at work. :shifty:


And no, the programmer is not to blame there. The part that already fails is the stub code by the MS VC++ compiler, that loads the dynamic libraries. The programmer simply compiled the application with the wrong run-time library.



Also, the file is from 2014, but regarding the typical update intervals of the customer, it might at least have been Windows 2000 back then...

---------- Post added at 20:12 ---------- Previous post was at 20:11 ----------

BTW does somebody know a good example of a science fiction naval ship? Somehow all science fiction seems to be spacecraft. :blink: