Posts by John H Woods

Re: Great OS

"There is no three fingered salute that brings up a menu for a task manager or console terminal."

Yes there is: CTRL - ALT - F1

You can also get control of the system using SysReq

Re: Can I be a CEO in my next life?

This is the supreme irony - they treat those down the bottom as interchangeable resources whereas it seems to me that the more senior you are, the less domain knowledge you need.

Re: Plus ca change

I'll see your JPS pencil case and raise you an early Playboy digital watch

clearly not a Dyson sphere...

... because we'd be able to hear it from here

Re: Tax Laws

"How many of the world's 5 largest economies are in the EU?"

2: France and Germany

UK stopped being the 5th largest when we voted for Brexit and, when we implement Brexit, we will either go shooting back into the Top 5 or shooting downwards to irrelevance, depending on your personal Leave/Remain polarity.

Note that the 3 world economies bigger than Germany have much bigger populations: Japan 150%; China 1500%; USA 350%.

Re: ".... isn't there a bit of a heavy metal risk here?"..

- yes I believe a lot of Hg goes up the crem chimney --- but I think Pb, As, Cd, Sb etc. remain something of a concern.

Somebody needs to read/watch American Gods.

Almost everybody

Re: Last of it's kind?

Funnily enough I bought an over priced LED torch in Maplins for exactly that reason... I'd gone in to try to find out what transistors would be good to allow a Raspberry Pi to control a load of remote control gate openers. Hmm, said the old chap at the counter, have you thought about using an opto isolator instead of having physically connected circuits?

I hadn't, because I didn't know what one was, but I got a small,useful and friendly lesson before taking his advice on which to buy and I said I'd buy two in case I mis-soldered the first one. I can't remember what the price was but they were so cheap that I didn't feel like I could honestly leave the shop without contributing something.

Stiffer Penalties

Not to mention the wholesale abuse of plea bargaining

Re: Why not copy mobile?

When I see Three's "are you an adult?" page it just reminds me I forgot to turn on my VPN

Re: IBM

India certainly does not have any Universities in (or, indeed, anywhere near) the global top 20, but it does have three in the top 200.

According to this it actually has three: IIT Delhi (172); IIT Bombay (179); and IIS Bangalore (190).

I think it's fair to say that given its size and GDP, India is under-represented in this ranking. And I very much doubt it is because of "biases and prejudices" --- it's more because India severely under performs in this sector.

That does not mean that any given Indian graduate is going to be poor but it does suggest to me that, on average, Indian degrees are poor.

Re: Oi!! (II)

"York is near the middle not the North"

It's in the North of England. Which (*prepares for downvotes*) is most sensibly described as above 53 degrees.

Re: "Put down the eggnog"

LOL "Things went mildly astray" for me too, due to a lack of alcoholic knowledge. I didn't drink alcohol until I was much older, so when teenage me was told, by a barista in bologna, that an excellent winter drink was Cointreau and fresh OJ warmed with the steam nozzle of an espresso machine, I just filed it under "good to know"

Years later, I had an espresso machine; a cold winter's day popped that nugget back of the stack and I suggested to my friends that they might like to try this. Not realising Cointreau is about 40%, I mixed it 50:50 with OJ, handed it out and everyone said it was marvellous. 10 minutes later I was the only one still conscious.

Re: "Medical Comforts"

Benny* and Hot**

* Benedictine

** Hot water

"concrete over the greenbelt"

Have a look out of an plane window (budget version: google earth) and you will see that you perception the UK as all built up except for green belt is not quite correct.

I hear a lot of people telling me the UK is overcrowded: mostly people who live in overcrowded places. There's plenty of space without having to tarmac the national parks, areas of national beauty or anything of very much ecological or amenity value at all.

I am so...

... stealing this

Phil, I respect your arguments, but without people voting Leave for irrational reasons the referendum result wouldn't even have been close, let alone a win for Leave.

"surely a file being scanned shouldn't be allowed to do anything until the scan is completed"

I completely agree but note that you could make exactly the same argument for a picture file, a document or even an http response.

The classic case is finding an input of a size and nature that exploits a processing allowing it to overrun its process space. One technique is the so-called NOP sled... A huge number of no-op byte codes preceding the code to be executed. Then if you can cause program execution to jump anywhere into the sled range, the code following it will be run.

You can't honestly tell me only a few people in the whole of the US arm of VW knew about it.

That's why they're only going for people who are sufficiently senior to carry the can for it. It's actually rather great that they aren't going for the actual techs - for all these people are referred to in the press as 'engineers' they are quite senior managers.

Another toy my younger relatives won't be getting from me.

Yes, El Reg readers aren't quite so gullible

Security through obscurity

Come on, Kerckhoff didn't get round to that principle until the late 19th century, you have to wait a while for these things to filter through to the latest technology

"There is a town in East Donegal whose residents don't always like to tell outsiders where they're from"

is it the one with the famous diving club?

Re: Huh?

Your link goes 404. You see, bugs can creep in anywhere ... even in a short comment.

Re: No longer laughing

I voted you down for misspelling fairweather.

Re: Clarification required

It's countable of course ... unlike the number of teams they form

Re: How worse than Single User Mode?

Physical access to the system is different from "terminal" access. Try getting root access on a well-configured Linux system using just the keyboard and the mouse. If you've got physical access to the box, however, you have everything except the content of encrypted drives.

Although presumably one could splice a wired KB or Mouse to connect a USB storage device and boot from that?

Re: OK, so which part do I register?

It goes back way further than that... it's the ship of Theseus paradox (Plutarch?), sorry I can't Google it just now I am on a tiny mobile device with a rain covered screen

Re: CSV files

Always use Tabs!

Re: So this 'Separate species' question

Tigons and Ligers are +usually+ infertile.

Re: This Has Been Going On For Some Time

Exactly - withdrawal of the blue tick is half-hearted: they should withdraw the account if it violates ToS, and only withdraw the blue tick if it turns out that the account belongs to an imposter.

Get close to someone's wage...

... of course that would also break the market. As with speed limits the fact that you can set it too low or too high doesn't mean it's a bad idea in itself