Pamela Anderson Hidden in Lecroy Wavepro Oscilloscope Firmware

[wkb]

Plenty of the free service manuals also have a rather 'interesting" background image on them as well.  When printing them I just unselect the printing of the background, as a mono version of the translucent colour watermark is not exactly usable and obscures the info you want.

Some of the images in some countries could land you in trouble with the secular police though, seeing as there is a lot more than ankles exposed.

Some countries you would not want yourself found IMO.

[GK]

Funny, for some reason once I turned 18, those magazines suddenly lost most of their appeal and I never actually bought one. The attraction was all in the forbidden aspect when we relied on someone finding his dad's stash.

I never bought all that many, but I have acquired quite an assorted stack the same way I acquired almost every Electronics Australia and Radio, TV & Hobbies magazine - via an intermediary who was/is friends with a hoarder, who was apparently doing a clean-out or something, who's family allegedly own(ed) a Newsagent. Whatever stock didn't sell over the decades they apparently hoarded. Whenever I visited for a period I was commanded to open my boot (trunk) to be gifted several boxes of assorted girly and electronics mags.

Risque Pam Anderson and Sam Fox photo were the mainstay of SSTV enthusiasts back in the day. I even recall once reading a feminist treatise on the dominant ideology of patriarchy or some such in the computer science fields citing all of the historically embedded girly pictures as evidence.

[darkstar49]

just checked... (in the FW)

Looks like the sinner is (/was ?) most probably at Lecroy... 

While I didn't spend hours on this, it looks like there's a little http daemon implemented in the FW (9.3.0), and that's where the image data is being referenced, in a section that contains (other) functions that are definitely Lecroy-related... but I've never owned nor used such a scope, so don't ask what this daemon is good for and/or what parameter(s) it expects...


Maybe some 'HTTP 404' error message, just a bit sexier ... :-P

[Mr. Scram]

One sw engineer that was inspired by the Apple  team that hid their team picture in the code.
I did not know that Pamela worked for LeCroy 

We had also an incident with one of our products.
Some debug info that should never be seen popped up at a customer.
It was not offensive but still quite embarrassing.
The sw engineer was fired for this, in the code review it was not found because he put it after a comment line on the same line behind the 120th column and he made a small change in the comment.
The code reviewers only see the first 120 characters and thought the change was the comment change.
So it was a deliberate act of hiding which cost him his job.

Warning for young players: management usually does not think eastereggs are funny 

I can't imagine just that being enough to fire someone, unless it happened in the US or something. There was probably a history there.

[timb]

Man, that particular LeCroy scope must have some enormous knobs on it!

[MT]

Hohum not really, but it seams to be a nice scope!

[timb]

Hohum not really, but it seams to be a nice scope!

*Palm*

No, you see “knobs” is slang for breasts. Pamela Anderson is famous for her large breasts. Get it?

[Fungus]

I thought "knob" was slang for penis.

[Mr. Scram]

I do see one or two knobs in this thread though

[blacksheeplogic]

I can't imagine just that being enough to fire someone, unless it happened in the US or something. There was probably a history there.

There's a difference between knowing & intentionally introducing unauthorized changes into the code base, verse a unintentional change.

This would be considered a serious breach of trust based on the companies I have work at, I would be very surprised if they had retained their job.

[Mr. Scram]

There's a difference between knowing & intentionally introducing unauthorized changes into the code base, verse a unintentional change.

This would be considered a serious breach of trust based on the companies I have work at, I would be very surprised if they had retained their job.

There was a code review. Either they dropped the ball or the procedure wasn't functioning properly. I can't imagine a programmer not being authorized to change code.

[EEVblog]

There's a difference between knowing & intentionally introducing unauthorized changes into the code base, verse a unintentional change.

This would be considered a serious breach of trust based on the companies I have work at, I would be very surprised if they had retained their job.

There was a code review, but the people and the procedure missed the change. I can't imagine a programmer not being authorized to change code.

It could easily pass a code review, because the image is likely not to be in the code, but simply linked into a some unused memory space with the linker.
The product is then handed over to the test group who test it it without incident.

[Kjelt]

I can't imagine just that being enough to fire someone, unless it happened in the US or something. There was probably a history there.

An angry customer complaiining to top managemnt leaving our manager with his "pants down" was probably the biggest factor, but as blacksheeplogic stated it was hidden with intent which was against all policies.
That and the content of the debug message which was very unproffesionall was the last straw.

I can imagine that if this scope would show this nude picture on some error and there was a complaint to LeCroy the consequences would be the same.

[Mr. Scram]

An angry customer complaiining to top managemnt leaving our manager with his "pants down" was probably the biggest factor, but as blacksheeplogic stated it was hidden with intent which was against all policies.
That and the content of the debug message which was very unproffesionall was the last straw.

I can imagine that if this scope would show this nude picture on some error and there was a complaint to LeCroy the consequences would be the same.

Again, I guess it depends on the county and the specific contract involved. Not all countries allow for firing someone on the spot over being embarrassed, though you might be allowed not to renew the contract later.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Who said that it must be a button sequence that makes it appear? Maybe it is triggered by recording a sufficiently descriptive waveform?

[taydin]

Who said that it must be a button sequence that makes it appear? Maybe it is triggered by recording a sufficiently descriptive waveform?

Maybe an FFT display of a signal with two prominent sidelobes

[MT]

Hohum not really, but it seams to be a nice scope!

*Palm*
No, you see “knobs” is slang for breasts. Pamela Anderson is famous for her large breasts. Get it?

It's you who didn't got it! You see it was a joke, her breasts are of silicone!   

[Fungus]

It's you who didn't got it! You see it was a joke, her breasts are of silicone!   

I don't think they were in that particular picture;

[mc172]

Knobs slang for breasts? 

The floppy drive makes me laugh. Did they really ever use it when it was even being developed? One of the blokes I work with has an Agilent E5062A network analyser on his desk. It's got a floppy drive whereas the one I've got is the newer 5061B and hasn't. Every now and then the floppy drive seems to check whether there's a disk in the drive and causes the entire system to hold for about 5 seconds. Drives him nuts.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Who said that it must be a button sequence that makes it appear? Maybe it is triggered by recording a sufficiently descriptive waveform?

Maybe an FFT display of a signal with two prominent sidelobes

Yep. Or a nice profile that could be surely conjured out of a decent AFG.

[bson]

On a related note, did you find out anything about the structure of the .fla in general?

[KE5FX]

Risque Pam Anderson and Sam Fox photo were the mainstay of SSTV enthusiasts back in the day. I even recall once reading a feminist treatise on the dominant ideology of patriarchy or some such in the computer science fields citing all of the historically embedded girly pictures as evidence.

Everyone who has done any sort of work with image processing has made the acquaintance of Miss November 1972:



And yes, unsurprisingly, 'Lena' has her fans in the virtue-signaling community.  The image is a terrible one for R&D work due to its poor color balance, so I think the only reason it's still popular is to kick sand in those peoples' righteously-offended faces.

Ms. Sjöblom (now a grandmother) was reportedly amused when informed of the act of cultural appropriation committed by graphics researchers, while Playboy reportedly wasn't. (NSFW if you work in a monastery)

[rrinker]

It's you who didn't got it! You see it was a joke, her breasts are of silicone!   

I don't think they were in that particular picture;

 Yeah that pic dates from before she had her first of two enhancements. IE, when she looked normal.

Hmm, an HTTP daemon - does that model have an ethernet port on it?

[Alex Eisenhut]

Wow does that mean Donna Michelle is hidden inside my Tektronix 547?

(I wasn't even alive when Donna was at her peak but for me, her and Marianna Hill are some of the most beautiful women from the 1960s)

[darkstar49]

not all WP9xx models had ethernet, but some did...

As stated, didn't put much effort in checking, but could only find references in that http part... that doesn't mean there isn't a magic keys/knobs combination, although it's less probable, as this would mean the reference to the image would use another 'base address' and use some offset to the image... not impossible, but rather unusual... (why would the http part reference it directly, while other code pieces would play around with a base address and some offset...)