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An important note for users of the Samsung ML-4050ND laser printer

If you configure the paper type on the Samsung ML-4050ND to "Recycled," it thinks you mean that you are printing on the unused side of sheets that have already been printed on one side. Of course you don't want to print on the already-printed side, so it will helpfully disable the duplexer in this case, no matter what else you do. If you are printing on actual recycled paper, that is to say, paper made from recycled fibres, and you want duplex printing, then you must set your paper type to "Plain Paper." Of course, nothing in the Samsung, CUPS, Foomatic, or Ghostscript documentation, nor in the comments or content of any manufacturer or third-party PPD file (should you be crazy enough to hack PPD files manually), is remotely helpful in debugging this issue.

(1 March 2009)

Visual Land VL-878 tips and tricks

I bought a Visual Land VL-878 portable audio/video player recently, and had some adventures trying to get it to work. I'm collecting the results of my trial and error on this page so that others with this or similar devices can save themselves some trouble.

(22 February 2009)

Slashdot "multicore" exploit explained

As is often the case with Slashdot coverage of security vulnerabilities, this article on a supposedly multicore-related exploit, and the Register article it links to, are so poorly written that it's not at all clear what they're talking about or why it would be a problem. The comments don't help either, since they go off in different directions based on other related and unrelated issues instead of the actual supposed problem. The real underlying issue turns out to be much less threatening than the article suggests.

(16 September 2007)

Bar code scanners and in-band commands

I've been interested in bar codes recently, and while pricing low-end scanners, I noticed something that seems to be a significant, and not widely publicized, security issue.

(9 August 2006)